By Girija Madhavan
Churches in Mysuru will soon prepare for Easter, Good Friday being on the 14th and Easter Sunday on the 16th of April. Photos of Easter last year at Saint Gregorios Orthodox Syrian Church in Mysuru reminded me of an Easter thirty-three years ago in Moscow in the former Soviet Union. We lived then in a Moscow city suburb, Vspolni Periyulok. Ours was an old house which, along with the Indian Ambassador’s Residence in the road Ulitsa Obukha belongs to the Indian Embassy. Our villa was said to have been originally built in the 1900s by a “Sugar Baron” from Petersburg for his mistress in Moscow. The Residence of the Indian Ambassador also had an apocryphal tale connected to it: that a ballerina built it for her Bulgarian lover. She died young, leaving him her house and wealth, which he ran through. He is said to have ended up as the doorman at the theatre where she danced.
