FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

 'Zdravstvuite….or that’s how they say it in Russian.Do not pronounce the first v..otherwise even the Russians would con-volute the pronunciation.

 Repetition in this case does not translate to retention I still  kept walking muttering Zdravstvuite…Zdravstvuite ,under my breath.After a break of fifteen minutes of lack of rendition I had to take a re-course in the words pronunciation,I am obviously not a natural Russian.

Definitely Indian though, I may be half way across the hemisphere but I know the local viral travels with me. I have this self realization of being infected because when you start learning Russian by attaching punju connotations to it, you have been in Delhi for a long time, so this is how I memorized the Russian ‘HI’…

Breaking it into two parts ZDRAST—VICHE…I allotted the second part to the Punjabi aithey uthey ithey ‘vich’..after that I just needed to focus on remembering the first part.

It is a fluctuating luminescence but the bright light in my head came on,on my last evening in Moscow,strolling down the artistic Arbat street,the idea to enhance my Russian local experience struck.

It occurred, rather untimely I must confess, that spending a week in Russia and not even knowing how to say Hi to my handsome portrait painter….unthinkable….considering my timing, the only Russian I could practice it on was the crusty immigration's officer at departures, who was not mighty pleased with the fact that the immigration slip from arrivals had gone walking, and probably lining the bin along with my nephews diapers back home.

Saying it,mumbling it, the first time didn't actually sound like anything a Russian would say,and asking me to repeat under pressure couldn't get a riveting performance from me,so the greeting that was sent forth again muttered was the universal hello.

The second person I uttered this to was back on my home turf, while regaling my friend with tales from ‘Russia with love’,this friend I greeted  with the an extremely loud version of the convoluted ZDRAVSTVUITE, the volume decibels increasing with the confidence in my knowledge that she would never correct me,having probably never heard the term before and all that would leave with her , was a lasting impression of my vast skills. Hence after the resounding success of the formal greeting I decided to chip in with the privet privet too…a slightly informal HI and pronounced exactly such….and thus I reveal 50% of my Russian skill with those two words.

Words covering the other half  being spasiba,meaning thank you.Now this is one word I mastered ,initially it came out as a shy almost apologetic sound to the hot Russian maid who came to clean up behind us very lazy Indians, starting with her, by the end of it I was brandishing it about town to everyone who bothered to bump into me.I must have been the most grateful person walking the streets of Moscow that week.

I did have genuine cause to use it though,because the real feel of a visceral thanks is only felt when you are lost in a strange country that refuses to acknowledge signs of any language that you have spoken or heard of since you were a foot long.

When you are surrounded by a river on one side and a park on the other but where you want to be is on a hill top,then asking for directions is the most probable course of action,the stumbling block comes when you approach a family that looks like they could speak English.

After the careful selection you are 99% staring into eyes that are all blue and 100%confused by your gesturing. The only other course of action is to get wilder in your gesticulation.hoping maybe one of your contortions will strike an old dumb charades memory between two linguistically alien people.Basically taking a cue from the super man movie with the raised hand flying sign and from two year old's at how to charade for a mountain, I managed a glimmer of recognition in the blue eyes, (some languages never change)eventually after  tonnes of grunting and English clues I was set along in the right direction.Leaving behind trails of spasiba echoing in my wake.

‘Spasiba’ flows and is ever gratefully churned out naturally, when you are in a  land that feels like its never been trodden on before, mud mulching under your feet in red riding hood's deep dark woods that are strangely standing in the center of the city ,part of a russian sad (park)and you have no idea whether to go left or right or straight ahead so that you can see a street,or maybe a cyclist or a passerby,or some indication that there is no wolf lurking around ready to pounce on you.I know the possibility of them stacking up woods where children feed squirrels and skate is highly unlikely but having grown up on a healthy diet of werewolf movies I could not subconsciously delete the options, could I?

Am I coming across as a likely candidate for the lost series??well navigating around a strange country when the bones in your body are made from safe cement,you basically want to fly and leap and ideally land on your feet,the other prospect is something which is at constant war with the adventurous spirits within.

So when I saw this group of people emerge  from my werewolf haze,I spaseebaaed god and profusely spaseebaaed the English speaking Russian breed of youngsters,and happily trotted along my way again,minus the mad gesticulation of last time.the footloose wanderer winning the battle against the ,' I should have stuck to the original path ‘ scolding strict alter ego.

The other word I learnt was in the confines of the house which my sister in law repeatedly used to fetch her ducklings to her…IDHI SUDHA…which basically means come here,now I couldn’t very well say that to half of Russia.It is one thing if you say that to a small child, you would excuse my self preservation skills in not shouting it to the Russian populace.I sufficed by going on repeat mode inside the house.

Learning how to sway your head gracefully and say DA!!if you want the man to keep pouring more wine into your glass is also a very important green signal,which incidentally would roll down very well with a Georgian KHACHAPURI,which in my dictionary is a stuffed pizza bread,(surprising to me was the fact that a country the size of a dot and population of three people was influencing a country that was hundred times bigger in gastronomic terms(though i can inhale just about anything),the country had the capability to conjure up a meal that stuffed me and left me wanting more, and for a word to get transformed in my mind from conjuring up Georgian architecture to hallucinating about pizza bread when any one would say Georgian from here on  i would say it was a lexically revolutionizing experience ) obviously continuing on from the viral it gets committed to memory by splitting it as  Kachaa Poori(Raw Poori-Indian flat fried bread)

A red signal one was NIYAT NIYAT…..which I put to good use to fob off a very tall and persistent stranger,who I eventually pegged as a beggar,When he flashed his stained teeth at me,lurched a little closer,and probably thought me gullible enough a target to ask for a dollar by wagging a finger at me,rude man.

Had the incident not seen me in a very crowded subway with people constantly pushing past me I may not have had the courage to loudly say NIYAT NIYAT and then coolly stroll off to the next shop along the dark underground subway..

In all my days in the city that eats mainly potatoes,if not borrowing from other cuisines of broken off sister countries, it is the parks of Moscow that tinge my experience with a brilliant halo. All other memories and language conquering vanish when I close my eyes today and sit back on the bench in the woods,look up stretch and smile at the bird that hops close to me,because I am sitting so still. I am still and so is my world,which usually spins faster than most spells.In this solitude a fat red squirrel mistakes me for one of the school kids that feed them,but I am a silent greedy person who has already finished her snacks,so they greedier still, curiously scamper close, sniff and then disdainfully scamper off,in rejected mode,with one last hopeful hop backwards.Tough luck little chaps!!

And even though Muscovite s may treat my piece of Moscow as a figment away from reality and what really shapes it is the historical buildings and socialist history,what sings its praises are compilations by great composers like Tchaikovsky. Probably Lenin also would not be very pleased by my take on him, as Lenin Bhaisaab (a term of reference placed as an honor by my,below a decade old nephews)but with all due respect the man makes a very imposing figure with a ten foot statue,but then maybe so would I make, if I was encased in ten feet of bronze,not taking away from the sculptor and with all due respect to lenin's ideologies that led a nation through revolution, I only speak of today. And what exists today, is a throbbing language insulated, cosmopolitan city which is same as any European town.

Moscow for me will always be,summer snow that floats ethereally around the city,sometimes settling on your nose as it passes,making your nose twitch. or sometimes just catching the sun,or the street lights,and today as I walked in the monsoon washed streets of delhi, the moths that flew past my nose whispered memories of the summer snow,and that is a trigger that will flick on Moscow channel forever in my memories cinema hall.

Moscow also is, the smell of wet wood,crushed leaves,stagnant lakes feathered by the summer snow,slithering golden ducks,couples standing holding hands,couples sitting on benches by these lakes,just reading,couples walking by, stopping for a stolen embrace,a fleeting kiss that sometimes lingers.Not all young, some old. It makes me pause and want to stay, not for want of companionship but the feel of Love in the air, an affirmation that the emotion does exist.

(actually they don’t need stealing, some are just all over each other and the desire to get a room doesn't exist, as the term’ stealing affections’ was left behind in the 20^th century,fueled by beds and hammocks hanging invitingly by the lake sides, I am guessing the powers to be, alarmed by the declining population ,are also fueling up the baby less Russia, with loads of free love opportunities)

They say that if you touch the walls of Kremlin then you would return again one day,I didn't smooth up those walls so who knows if I ever walk these roads again but forever for me the colour of Moscow will be green,The feel of Moscow, love.The touch , fluttery and fleeting, crisp and extremely mobile and bright Neon in the glimmering summer  months.The vibrations, of Hope,as light as the summer snow that shrouds city in its hunt for a safe home,hopefully.