By Girija Madhavan
To some of us “Russia” evokes the memory of its great writers: Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekov and others. Even in translation from the original Russian, they have an impact on their readers including some Indian thinkers. Later writers like Vladimir Nabokov and Boris Pasternak lived in the twentieth century. When my husband and I were posted to the Indian Embassy in Moscow in the winter of 1981, we first thought of the vast country, its churches and icons, and its literary heritage. Only later did we start to grapple with the practical problems of the constricted life of diplomats in Moscow during the Soviet era. With anticipation we boarded our Air India flight to Moscow. After a bumpy landing we could only see a great expanse of snow all around, no airport buildings in sight. When a red vehicle began to tug the plane forward, we realised that our plane had landed in an adjacent field, not the runway of Sheremetyevo airport. However, we settled down well in the house allotted to us in the Moscow suburb of Vspolni. It was a dark winter, with grey skies pierced by bare branches and snowflakes that piled up in mounds. The intense cold made it hard to be out for long. After a wet and bleak thaw, the trees showed a powdering of green from fresh new leaves, the sun shone and the golden domes of the churches glittered. In the spring of 1982, Ananth, our son, was visiting us and I wanted to explore the nearby sights with him. We decided to go to Peredelkino, about 25.8 kilometres from Moscow. In the Soviet regime certain places were off limits. Maps were not available. Our first drive took us near a boarded up church and a militiaman flagged us down with his baton and made us turn back.
