The Wild (y)East

Diary of a Traveler in Russia

[thewildyeast-blog]

Stranger Encounters

Moscow has a special charm on rainy days, which is to say it is often charming because rain in the late autumn happens too frequently to be worth the mention. I like rainy days because they make for great photography field days. Puddles on the streets are both messy and beautiful – messy because I can never quite gauge how deep the potholes are before I jump into them, and beautiful because reflections are often more intriguing than the things they reflect. A beautiful mess, they are. On these days I would find myself looking down more frequently than I do up.

The day I wandered about in Petrovka Street had been especially cold, and it was hard to tell sleet apart from rain. The sky was a steely grey, and there was no slanted rays to aid photography. I had to wait for the right time, or find my own light. The good news was that I had time – it was one of those rare days when I actually managed to create time by pretending there was no work to be done. These days the only way to find time is to create an illusion of time and live in it, if only momentarily.

A column of chilly air streamed in as I made my timid entrance through the huge doors of the monastery. Age was written everywhere – on the withering brick walls, crusty ceilings with flaky paint peeling off like thin sheets of macadamia nut ice-cream, and creaking doors with hinges well-worn by rain. It felt colder inside the complex than outside, perhaps because all around there were stones that had a way of preserving the cold on a wintry day like this. I took off my gloves - they always got in the way of taking photographs – and let the cold bite. No pain, no gain; it was necessary.

To describe the monastery as picturesque would be missing the point – for some reason that is a word I had always reserved for natural landscape - but the Vysokopetrovsky Monastery was arresting in its muted grandeur. Once upon a time, before the walls had been blackened with age and the crooked drainpipes eaten to frills by rust, it must have been quite imposing. It still is, but in a more muted way. Behind the main bell tower was a tussocked lawn, an ill-tended corner of the garden with a soft damp climate of its own. I walked through a long stone corridor bleached with age and mossed up bricks, until I reached a door from which a warm aroma wafted out and led me in by the nose.

Inside was what the Russians call a stolovaya - a canteen. This one felt like a cave, suffused with the same colors that had adorned the interiors of the St Basil's Cathedral. It was a matt earthy palette that, despite the liberal use of contrasts in the murals of saints and kings, were not intrusive. The lights cast a warm penumbra on the ceilings, which probably made my Russian blinitaste warmer than it actually was.

An old priest cloaked in ink-black exorasson spoke in low voices to a young man whose lips had remained pursed and eyebrows creased throughout. I sat quietly sipping on my soup, preparing to re-enter the cold.

***

I first met Nina through the camera.

She was novelettishly posed, her head held at an acute downward tilt and her shallowly cleft chin tucked into her shoulder. Unaware of being spied on - yes, I can be quite the creep when I spot a good portrait opportunity - she stood bent over her easel, applying a dab of color here, scrumbling a detail there while I busied myself with positioning my camera and composing my pictures.

I decided then that I needed a close-up portrait of her. Approaching strangers had become my strong suit after having to do that repeatedly for my Humans of Stanford project. But to do that in Russian, a language I had a less-than-rudimentary grasp of, was going to be a challenge. It wasn't going to be the first time, but what I was more apprehensive of was less how I would begin - that I had the words for - but where the conversation would go, if I could understand her reply at all, that is.

Just couple weeks before that I had met two Kyrgyzstan ladies in an Armenian cafe, and had a two-hour long conversation in a mix of broken Russian and sign language. It was a very happy encounter that left me with an invitation to Kyrgyzstan sometime in the future; someday, maybe I'd take it up. I should have thanked them for emboldening me - to be understood in a foreign place is a very precious feeling. And although Moscow is one place that is difficult to get around without knowing the language, the few encounters I have had with strangers in Russia also made me realize that they are generally - apart from security guards who are always paranoid and grumpy - very good listeners.

A friend of mine once wrote a spot-on analogy:

"... Americans are like mangos – it’s easy to get past the peel to the juicy fruit and talk to them about all of their opinions and experiences, but at a certain point you hit the pit, as many Americans seem to exhibit a lack of curiosity for truly understanding other countries. Russians are like coconuts. The shell is impossible to break, but, once you break it, they have an unimaginable amount to offer."

A generalization, sure, but this was a generalization that has proven quite accurate during my stay there. A thirty minute conversation with a Russian I meet for the first time - even when I had barely known the language - would reveal more about him or her than conversing with Americans. This is not to say that Americans are superficial in their interactions - of course are always exceptions to the rule, and sometimes even the rule itself is not useful given how diverse the US is - but there is something about the frankness and forthrightness of Russians that make conversations more honest, unguarded and upfront. They just don't have a habit of sugarcoating speech with niceties or feel the need to call a spade anything other than a spade. An admirable trait in a world too ready to sacrifice truth for feel-good cushiness.

But I digress.

The first thing that caught my eye as I approached her were her paintings - they had an impressionistic quality and a palette of colors that matched the apron she had been wearing that day. Her subject was an old ochre-colored dome - not the most conspicuous thing around the complex, but had a subtle rainy beauty to it. Yes, rainy. But of course all that came out of my mouth had been - очень красивы картины ("very beautiful paintings") - which was all I could manage with my meager Russian vocabulary.

The most frustrating about speaking a foreign language in a foreign place - at least when you first started out - is this: everything that comes out from your mouth is either an overstatement, or an understatement. I hate to be imprecise with my words - being imprecise means missing the point, the intention, and it makes you a liar. Maybe that is why I have always paid more attention to vocabulary than to grammar as I was learning Russian - I was desperate for words.

Anyhow - we had a pleasant conversation, and for a long time afterwards we both immersed ourselves in our respective tasks at hand - she on her painting, and me on my photographs of dismembered stone tombs along that corridor. It wasn't until later, when she invited me to a show at the Bolshoi, that I learnt that she works at the Bolshoi Theatre. And it wasn't until I got home that she was an accomplished writer and painter who had a Wikipedia page to herself, and was the winner of one of the highest arts awards in Russia. Which was both a surprise and not really - her painting of the monastery had been impressive even in its unfinished form.

Moscow throws up surprises in the unlikeliest nooks and crannies - and already I am missing days like these. I'm currently in London, and am writing this after looking through some of these photos and finishing an email to Nina to thank her for the tickets to Bolshoi. Moscow has left me with a lot of these encounters to look back on, and if I had all the time in the world there would probably be twenty more of posts like these on the site. But as it is, winter break will soon be over (which means much less writing time) and I would have to move on to a new quarter where much will happen at neck-breaking speed. But the photos will always be there, and I will work my way through them, letting Moscow sink in slowly - one encounter at a time.

[thewildyeast-blog]

BRB, Russia.

In Ho Chi Minh Airport, in Transit. 5 December 2013, 12:56pm.

I'm in transit again. Sometimes it feels as if my life is always in transit, waiting to board the next plane on my way to somewhere. If I had collated every piece I write in airports while waiting among crowds of tired travelers it would piece together a pretty revealing picture of my growing up. Where did you grow up? Among several places, I might say I grew up in airport transits. It is after all where I took my breaks in between journeys, lost in the crowd of people who are also waiting to go somewhere, finding myself asking: where on earth am I going this time?

This time, I'm going home. I'm going home. Like the first winter in freshman year, I bought a ticket for Singapore on a whim and am pulling off Operation Homebound again. In a couple hours my mother will be reeling back from pure surprise and asking me how much I spent on my plane ticket this time. It'd be a figure she doesn't want to hear, but then it will be all worth it. I never told her that her homecooked food was worth that much and more, and maybe this time I should.

Three months ago I left for Moscow not knowing why exactly I was going there, besides wanting to get out of the Stanford bubble, have some alone time, clear the backlog of books I wanted to read, and just throw myself into complete unfamiliarity and see if I can swim. I have been in too many unfamiliar situations, but not for as long as three months in a place I know close to nothing of. And Russian as a foreign language was probably as foreign as it could get. The only thing I knew about Russians (or thought I knew) was that they drink a shit ton of vodka, which turned out to be absolutely untrue (they prefer beer). Well okay, maybe a little bit more than that, since I had to read about it in class and once represented Russia in a MUN mock conference. But apart from a math teacher whose Russian accent made math more difficult, I knew nobody from Russia and Moscow was not more than a concept.

Three months later, I find myself on a plane leaving Moscow, chatting to a Russian couple in Russian and wondering when I will get the chance to speak that language again. Time works in incomprehensible ways, and three months in Moscow had felt like a year. And by the end of it had become a second home, and I was dreading to leave. So there I was, caught in a weird gridlock: wanting badly to go home to Singapore, and wanting badly to stay in Moscow. I figure if teleportation isn't going to happen soon cloning needs to. It never occurred to me that leaving Moscow would be that difficult, that I would come to feel attached to a place that just three months ago had been no less alien than Mars itself.  

Russia is not a place you fall in love with - not in the same way people do with cities like Paris, soaked in a whole penumbra of romantic imaginings and, so said a friend, lives up to them. There is nothing romantic about this place, and if one goes for an extended stay in Moscow with anything less than an open mind it is easy to find everything depressing and disappointing. It's not so much the winter as it is the barriers that make life unnecessarily difficult. I've had some encounters with security guards (they are literally everywhere in this security state) I will not recall fondly, and Murphy's Law works way more frequently here the best laid plans of man and mice often will go awry. And if you don't know the language, good luck on getting anywhere because this is one city that does not have English signage anywhere, not even in what is probably the most efficient metro system in the world. It's a place that tests patience. (though I should add that it is extremely rewarding if you give you survive the test)

Every place in the world has its own paradoxes, but Russia more than others. For a country steeped in contradictions that run so deep, the only way to approach it is with a sense of irony. It was, after all, an empire and the biggest social experiment in history before it imploded and collapsed on its own weight, leaving behind a heap of tangled rubble. People woke up one day in 1991 to find that the mighty Soviet Union, along with all the ideological baggage it carried, disappear into the fog of history as if it had never existed. How much disillusionment and disenchantment did the air in Moscow hold, at the cusp of such dramatic changes? People who have lived through it - especially the older generation - speak of it with the sort of reticence that comes with having had a bad dream that is better left unrecalled. Many still drink and smoke their disillusionment away: about 400,000 Russians die from tobacco-related diseases each year, and 300,000 from causes linked to alcohol. Life is hard; sometimes the escape route that alcohol and chain-smoking - temporary in the short run and certain in the long - can be so tempting and such a relieve.

I have written about Russians' disenchantment with politics before, and for some balance in perspective Caroline Wheatley's reply is a good rejoinder. Like I said, Russians are politically disenchanted only because they are idealists at heart. "Whatever the reasons," Isaiah Berlin rightly noted, "there is no doubt that ideas were taken more seriously and played a greater and more peculiar role in Russian history than anywhere else." Their commitment to ideas and grand narratives came at a great cost, and when the cloud of dust at the heel of revolution finally settled, winter has come and all around there is a sort of grayness that makes any pondering of the future seem unnecessarily melodramatic, even dangerous.

But for all that bleakness there is much beauty to be found, if we care to see it.

On some days I go about the city with my camera, taking pictures of both decay and growth. On other days I sit alone in cafes, bookshops, libraries, churches and monasteries, and it is at these places I have had the best conversations (btw: Russians are really more open and friendly than they look on the Metro, so please don't judge a Russian by his stoic non-smiling face), usually in broken Russian interspersed with dramatic gesticulations. And then there are times when music, the one universal language that knock down cultural walls instantaneously, does all the work: that day V and I sat by the roadside, whipped out our instruments and sang with a gathering crowd of curious Russians who also knew the Beatles by heart.

Now my flight is here, but I'm not quite done. This is the trouble with me - I never give enough time for thoughts to settle to the bottom of the seabed of consciousness before moving on. It doesn't help that the shelf life of my own memories sometimes prove to be incredibly short. By the time I reach my next destination, another piece of Russia would have to be pushed to the back of the refrigerator, until it reaches its expiry date and turns sour, a blur. In time I will need to recollect what the hell went on in the past three months (read: too much) Not so much that people can read it, but more to chronicle those moments, thoughts and encounters that will disappear from my own consciousness if they don't get written down.

In time, I hope. BRB, Russia, in ten days. Home - ETA 3 hours!

[thewildyeast-blog]

The Disenchanted Russia

Two months into my study-abroad here in Moscow, I have this to say: Russia is a depressing place, even if there is - and indeed there is - beauty in its melancholy. On rainy days, when gloom and doom is the order of the day, I could almost taste the dolefulness that hangs in the air. The further one goes from its capital Moscow, the more depressing it gets - a point made with great poignancy by a recent New York Times feature titled "The Russia Left Behind". Signs of physical decay all around seem too eager to remind one of the profound political and social decay that Russia is going through. It is as if the sun has left for another place.

And if Russians are one of the most pessimistic and disenchanted people in the world, they have reasons to be. Few peoples in the world can be said to have experienced a history as dramatic and traumatic as the Russians'. For every generation since 1917, the only constant had been change: not incremental, gradual changes, but sea changes that continually sent the country down topsy-turvy vortexes.

First there was the October Revolution in 1917 which promised colossal changes meant to shift Russia's autocratic paradigm to a liberal parliamentary system. Alas, that was hijacked by another form of autocracy in the shape of communist despotism. When the myth of the communists' messianic mission evaporated, tectonic policy shifts through Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika sought to put Russia on a new path to modernization. But then came 1991: the Soviet Union collapsed like a house of cards, and the Communist project was pronounced dead. Boris Yeltsin staged a coup shortly after, and this time an anti-communist revolution took Russia by storm, promising democratic and economic reforms. For a moment Russia looked primed to set off on its own path to modernity, democracy and free markets, but instead of prosperity and freedom the Russians got economic meltdown, crime and ethnic strife.

The pendulum swung between autocracy and liberal reforms as revolutions upon revolutions put the Russians on a seesaw of hope and disillusionment. Reforms gave way, time and again, to the resurgent tradition of autocracy. All that seems to be left now is a sense of disenchantment, summed up disgruntledly by ex-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin: "We tried better, but it went the usual way". Everything has changed, but nothing has changed.

Except, perhaps, the people's appetite for change. "Don't talk to Russians about change or revolution," a Russian friend told me, "they are sick and tired of it. People want evolution, not revolution." But the 'evolution' that the Russians so desire is not going to happen on its own. As with any social and political changes, incremental improvements can only be realized with painstaking persistence and a healthy dose of idealism. But judging from the political apathy manifest in low turnout rates in the recent Moscow Mayor election and the sore lack of new political contesters, the younger generation has almost neither.

The general attitude of the populous is to "wait and see" which, unfortunately, is probably the only smart thing to do. "There is no way you can get to any political position of importance without playing dirty," my friend reminds me, "Every level of the system reeks with rank corruption, and it is so hard to break in because it is an absolutely closed system." In Russia, it is almost impossible to enter into the political game unless you are already part of the existing power structure. Attempting to challenge the system from the outside is like running up to a concrete wall and bashing your head against it - a pointless and dangerous venture. Change, it appears, has to wait.

But for how long? Four attempts to save Russia from decay has failed, and much time has been lost. The rich is leaving for better places, and the less well-off stay put because they can't afford to. Social mobility continues to decline and is on its way to proving a point about post-socialist societies - that initial accumulation of capital is also final. Seeing little incentives to change the status quo, the Russian oligarchs continue to sit comfortably on Russia's oil wealth, overlooking a glamorous decay.

Each morning, on my commute, I come across this portrait I now consider to be distinctively Russian: potholes on the roads, slabs of concrete lying about on unkempt earth, open construction sites from which clouds of dust rises up with each passing of an old rickety Lada, chipped tessellations on the exteriors of apartments worn off by a combination of age and negligence. At the academy where I study, an entire skyscraper stands despondently upon a wasteland with no past glory to speak of,  for it had been abandoned before it was even completed. Yet despite all the profound decay and general gloominess, there are days when the sun would peer through the thick cloud cover to cast a silver lining, bestowing upon Moscow a gorgeous radiance.

Perhaps Russia's silver lining, too, lies in wait beneath the depressing cover of rank corruption. One thing, however, is quite certain: If Russia is to succeed in lifting itself out its slow road to ruin, it would have done that in spite of its government, and not because of it.

This piece was originally published in my weekly column with The Stanford Daily. 

[thewildyeast-blog]

Russia's schizophrenia: East or West?

“Come hither, to us! Come away 

From the horrors of war into our warm embrace. 

Should you not, we have nothing to lose 

And treachery is open to us, as well… 

Whilst groping through the barren lands and brush 

Of dearest Europe, we shall 

Retreat. We shall turn on you 

Our Asian mug!"

(Alexander Bloc, ‘Scythians’, 1918)

—

Probably the most apt lines that explain the schizophrenic, juvenile complexion of attraction and repulsion towards the West in Russia’s foreign policy. The sting of rejection makes one bitter; the psychological dilemma remains unresolved: Is Russia part of the West or the East? 

As long as the answer is “both” - which is as good as not having found an answer - the hysteria and habit of creating external enemies in the West among Russia’s political elites will remain, further isolating and marginalizing Russia.

[thewildyeast-blog]

According to Tartar mythology, Sharula (Cyrillic: Шүрәле or Шурале, Tatar: Şüräle), is a forest demon and shapeshifter who lures victims to a thicket and tickles them to death. Caution, travelers into the woods of Bashkir...

[thewildyeast-blog]

Light slanted in the windows and settled upon the face of the boy, so that the illumination seemed to come from within him. 

On the overnight train bound for Moscow, back from Kazan. The morning of November 4th 2013. 

[thewildyeast-blog]

Winter Olympics 2014: Russian President Vladimir Putin takes on the ‘black widows’ in Sochi security crackdown

Russia has been targeting conservative Muslims in its restive Northern Caucasus, reportedly taking saliva samples from women, over concerns about insurgent attacks at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Another security measure dramatized as a "crackdown" that does nothing by way of counter-terrorism. If anything, targeting Muslim women merely heightens suspicion and distrust among the Russians and Muslims. 

Typical reaction after any breaches of security - government exploits opportunity to create internal enemies, dramatizing potential threats in a bid to justify draconian measures and coercive power, all in the name of "security". 

[thewildyeast-blog]

The day the leaves stopped falling

The leaves have stopped falling. I walked along the usual homeward path, which in time will be covered in snow and I would have had to trudge. It is an odd scenery, one that I am not quite familiar with because I have never stayed long enough in a winter country to actually feel the transition from fall to winter. Fall is a beautiful time - each morning I had woken up just as the sun rises, and on lucky days the sky would be canvas of morning purple with the pale white of a distant moon. Earlier on when the sun rose earlier and illuminated everything around me, so that the most cheerless buildings would be reinvigorated with a rare breath of life, the leaves flickering like golden confetti.

If there is something Moscow has given me, it is the most beautiful sunshine. Sunny days are few and far between here in Moscow, where gloom and doom is often the order of the day. But precisely because it is so rare, it is all the more beautiful when the sun does peer through the thick cloud cover to cast a silver lining here and there, or, as on a clear day, bestows upon Moscow a gorgeous radiance. You see, for the most part of my life I have lived in Singapore and California, where it is easy to take the sun for granted. Some things you don't notice until it's gone - it's that way with the sun here in Russia. 

I breathe and watch the vapors rise, disappearing behind me. 

The winter has a way of waking me up in a way that even the most caffeinated espresso can never match. My head almost always feels lighter in the cold air, and there is a sharp clarity that renders everything less incomprehensible, less blurred. Every cell in my body feels more alive and awake, and the headache that usually comes with insufficient sleep dissipates within minutes. My cheeks, ruddy red from the cold, freezes up so it takes too much effort to smile and so I don't. Perhaps that's why Russians don't smile a whole lot. 

Now the trees have gone completely bald, with just a few stray leaves dangling precariously in the frigid air, waiting for that one slight zephyr to detach it from evergreen. 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold / Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang / in me thou see'st the twilight of such day/ As after sunset fadeth in the west; / Which by and by black night doth take away... 

Shakespeare still says it best. I started reading Shakespeare's sonnets during my high school days, and some images never really leave you - after a while you can't help perceiving your own environment with those visual frames at the back of your head. Poetry changes the way you see - it animates even the dullest places because unwittingly you come to attach meaning and color to things even when there is none. It makes one a better photographer, because it makes you notice how everything exists in relation to each other... The first step to better photo composition. Someone must have elaborated on the similarity between photography and poetry: Both are tableaus, frozen in time,  succinct perspectives that capture so much with so little. Their compactness is also what makes them engaging: they demand unpacking and deconstruction on the part of the reader/viewer. I haven't got a camera with me today, so I've had to use my mind's eye. I know the pictures I take, unlike digital photography, will fade - because the film of memory is a victim of time. But our brain is also an exceptional developing fluid that can make the most melodramatic prints.

I wonder if the day will come when we can download visual images in our brains onto the computer, if there is a way of reifying visual memory besides drawing and illustration. Because I have a stockpile of them in my head, and I would like to get them out before my memory fails me. 

Funny that I'm realizing this only now, after all that meandering stream of consciousness in this post: Maybe that's precisely why I'm writing now. 

[thewildyeast-blog]

Russia was always notorious for the gap between culture and civilization. Now there is no more culture. No more civilization. The only thing that remains is the gap.

Victor Pelevin, Homo Zapiens. 

If it is a gap I'm looking into it's proving to be a very curious one.

[thewildyeast-blog]

The Candy Jar in Red Square

This morning I woke up to absolutely gorgeous weather by Russian standards: sunlight pouring into the room and a clear azure blue outside the window. Because rain is a staple here - more so than potatoes - a sunny day is surprising in the same way that thunderstorms in Palo Alto are followed immediately by a frenzy of facebook status updates ("OMG did you just hear the THUNDER ROLLING"). Eagerly I had my breakfast, answered some emails, and stepped out into the a new day with The Beatles on my earphones. Even While My Guitar Gently Weeps sounds happy on a sunny day like this. 

I was due to meet V at 12, and reached on the dot at 12.20pm - (Russian timing, ahem). We had planned to walk around an old district of Moscow, Tretyakovskaya, but ended up eventually at St Basil’s Cathedral – the poster-cathedral of Moscow on most travel brochures: colorful domes, architecturally lego-style, domes like candle flames on a birthday cake. If not for the crosses that sit atop some of these domes you might think it’s a 16th century candyland. I was half-expecting a Russian Willy Wonka to jump out at me.

I’ve seen many churches and cathedrals around the world, so many that they no longer surprise me anymore, partly because most are cookie-cutters of each other (architectural experts might call me a philistine), and so there is a diminishing marginal Wow factor with such visits. Several places of worship I have had the chance to visit during my travels have left particularly deep impressions, though. Topping the list is the Sagrata Familia in Barcelona, designed by Gaudi a century ago, and is still in construction after some ninety years. It is hands-down my favorite cathedral in the world, and the most un-cathedral looking architecture you will ever meet. There is something very organic in the way columns meet spires, columns and apses meet - a style characteristic of Gaudi, if you spend enough time in Barcelona.

But I digress. Let's come back to St Basil's Cathedral.

The St Basil’s Cathedral is nowhere as grand and overwhelmingly imposing as the Sagrata Familia, partly because architecturally it seems to take itself so lightly. If I had been a traveler in the 16th century seeing this from afar for the first time it would have reminded me of a bonfire with Turkish delights and Torti icing - can I seriously be expected to pray here? Today one would think it is a theme park, or lego-model built by a child who takes his hobby too seriously. 

In a word, this is a bizarre cathedral. There really is nothing quite like this anywhere, or at any point in all architectural history. Most designs follow a certain tradition, a certain architectural style or language. This cathedral, on the other hand, has no analogues in Russian architecture, and nothing in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century even comes close. A complete departure from anything known at the time, with dazzling interleaving of manifold details that all seem like the product of a vivid dream. Or perhaps the architect’s blueprint had fallen into the hands of a curious child who decided that the domes could do with some colors, and proceeded to put his crayons to use. 

Legend has it that the Moscovites modeled the onion-shaped domes after candle flames burning bright, so that God may take notice and give Moscow its blessings. If I were God, though, I might mistake the domes for Khong Guan Fancy Gem Biscuits and pop them into my mouth with a sip of hot Milo.

The St Basil's is an architectural oddball, but it is a splendid oddball. On a sunny day like this one, there is something magical in the way ceramic tiles of emerald, white and red bounce light off each other on those hemispherical domes. Legend has it that upon its completion Ivan the Terrible blinded the architect behind the cathedral - the poor man's  name was Postnik Yakovlev - so that he could not construct a more splendid cathedral for anyone else. (What a way to thank the best architects of your fancy projects, Ivan. You sure live up to your name.)

Stepping inside the Cathedral, I wandered about a labyrinth of narrow vaulted corridors and dimly-lit chambers with characteristically tall ceilings, coffered ceilings, vertical cylinders and ornate gold. It was easy to get lost because, unlike most cathedrals, there is calculated asymmetry in the its complex multi-axial layout. The interior decor was a blend of early Muscovite elements with influence of Italian Renaissance, bringing about an eclecticism that is today unmistakably Russian but really not quite (in origins).

"In 1555, Ivan the Terrible built the Saint Basil's to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan," I had learned from an adjacent tour group. Funny how it is - the cathedral, for all its trappings of religious piety, was really intended to be a trophy that sang paeans to the military triumphs of Ivan the Terrible.

But one man's treasure is another man's trash. Some 375 years later, the Communists had contemplated demolishing it, as they had done to many churches all around the USSR. Stalin, it was said, had picked up a model of the cathedral to contemplate how Red Square would look without it. The cathedral's fate hung in the balance, and it took some fierce opposition from hard-line Bolshevik - including conservation Baranovsky who sent Stalin a telegram saying he would rather kill himself  - to change his mind.

And so it was, that when cold war descended upon Russia and Khrushchev stood gazing sternly at a synchronized military procession from his Kremlin balcony, Saint Basil's would stand like a garish stage set for a Disney show or a Nutcracker ballet. It was, as someone once described, quite the clown's nose on the face of the communist empire.

Today, St Basil's belongs to T-shirts, tacky shotglasses and James Bond movies where it plays a quick signifier of Moscow. But it is also gaining a religious significance that did not used to exist. On my way out, I overheard a low voice mumbling a hectic prayer. In the dimlit chamber, I made out the figure of a headscarved lady, bowed over and reverentially kissing the holy relics. Within minutes, a second lady came by, bowed and did the same, this time with even more fervent Christian devotion.

Perhaps our wacky looking cathedral might one day be taken seriously as a cathedral, an actual place of worship. As Orthodox Christianity undergo a revival in Russia, the Saint Basil's may become more than a national symbol - it might become a religious symbol. What is undisputed is that it will always occupy a special place in the hearts of the locals, who, believe me, will get mad at you if you compare it to Disneyland. Meanwhile, foreigners continue to confuse the Saint Basil's with the Kremlin because really, who cares about the boring brick red walls when a giant candy jar stands right by it? 

[thewildyeast-blog]

Будь что будет. Be that as it may.

[thewildyeast-blog]

Raining Dogs

Got home today drenched to the hilt, my boots soaked and my hair clammy with rain and all that crosswind. At noon I went out to Sokolniki Park to watch a dog show with C & N. Got there, and it was raining cats and dogs. Dogs of all breeds – big and small and cute and weird – all in the same big hall mopping about and waiting for their turns to perform some doggy stunts I am sure they were half-hearted about… because the dogs looked bored and the only excited living things there were the dog parents who feed them with tender loving care. Was taking photos and came to realize that people bear uncanny resemblance to their pet dogs. Sighted a gigantic Tibetan mastiff that looked like a lion bumbling into a dog show by accident. It was also exceedingly hilarious to see ginormous dogs next to teeny weeny chihuahuas. As I wondered what the dogs were thinking the following scene played out:

Tibetan Matiff: [with deep sleepy voice] I’mma run over you, you know. 

Chihuahua: You can try. I will bark you to pieces.

Tibetan Mastiff: [thinks] why do fiesty chilli padis like these even exist. [says] Ok dude no joke they’re gonna make us do these stupid turns and walkabouts again. It’s crammed here just look where you’re going alright, pal? 

Chihuahua: Your grandfather road ah, you watch where you’re going you tibetan bull in a china russian shop. *stands doggedly where it is, refusing to budge, feeling diva and bigger-than-thou. Let’s see how you pull of that three-point-turn, Mastiff.

On cue, Chihuahua swiftly performs a twinklebell-turn, cat-walked back to her proud master and smiles smugly. Mastiff had enough of her saucyness and, without warning, leaped into the air, performing a backflip that  sent hushes and gasps of incredulity across the hall. Then silence. A 150-pounds Mastiff doing a backflip is like a pregnant woman doing a tug-jump – impossible, and just a bad idea. On his landing he crushes the chihuahua, who lets out a final whimper, and expires thinking the sky has fallen.

——————-

Ok, none of the above happened – I was just bulldogging my way through an otherwise boring dog show. The dogs and human beings were more interesting to watch when they were not actually in the show: OCD pet owners brushing and plaiting the hair of a wheaten terrier, guy with tattoo putting a leash over a Tibetan mastiff as if it had anywhere to run to, manicure-obsessed girls doing pedicure for their dogs. Some dogs are definitely living the life – per capita consumption expenditure of some dogs are probably way higher than some of us Also, first-world dogs easily spend many times more over their shorter lifetime than a third-world man. Our world is quite an odd place. Note to self: time to start an insurance company for pets.

Took a long walk from Sokolniki Park to Gorky Park in the rain to meet L. Walking in the rain was a strangely therapeutic experience – in the cover of the rain one feels especially safe – whoever has heard of someone attempting daylight robbery in the rain? - and free because no one can hear you singing a song all wrong when you forget the lyrics (not that the Russians can tell anyway). Cars sped by, creating rickety-racketing sounds on the old bridge across Moscow river and creating mini spectacles of water spraying everywhere. Sky is colored Moscow-grey – the sort of grey that tells you the rain is going to last forever.

I was meeting L, the cutest Russian in the whole of Moscow, for coffee – a welcome refuge from the rain. Talked about russian guys, marriage, witches, superstitions, russian girls and their crazy heels, russia’s sorry state back in the USSR, names for babies, and went melodramatic over this song.

[thewildyeast-blog]

Home is where the mother is.

I am so far away from home but I am feeling very at home here in my room in Moscow. It has been raining all night and all day, and I have become so much accustomed to the sound of pelting rain that its absence now causes me unease. I put on my headphones to Tchaikovsky’s music. Three words describe the 1812 Overture: grandeur, grandeur and grandeur. Towards the end real cannons sounded with the French national anthem reappearing in its various guises, bringing Napolean’s message of revolution to Russia. Listening to the overture while reading about Napolean’s ill-fated attempt to invade Moscow is a cinematic experience played out in the head; with the aid of imagination the movie beats any one might see on the silver screen.

At this moment I am sitting right before the  window, typing away while stealing long gazes into the night. Outside the night has fallen, which my Russian neighbors are greeting with amber lights burning warmly in the cold winter night. Finnials stand atop stoic gothic buildings like silhouettes against a dark canvas aglow with an amaranth purple, diffusing into the surrounding black so that it is barely noticeable, if at all. It is not snowing yet (but it will in time), and I am reminded of the scene in Cloud Atlas where Timothy Cavendish punches away at his typewriter while fat snowflakes fall outside onto slate roofs and granite walls.

Like Solzhenitsyn laboring in Vermont, I shall beaver away in exile, far from the city that knitted my bones.

Playing now: Shostakovich’s Waltz No.2.  

Beavering away, and far away from home, yes – but I am not quite in exile. There is so much warmth in this house it makes me look forward to coming home so much that it actually takes discipline to be out and about. I am after all here to experience Moscow, not hide away in a cozy room reading and looking dreamily out of the window all day (though I obviously wouldn’t mind). My host mother – which we call babushka here in Russia – has been more than I can ever ask for. Svetlana has been more than a host: she is a mother and teacher to me. She has an austere demeanor that belies kindness, and strange as it sounds, it is her former quality that makes this place feel like home.

Should I forget the bathroom lights, or the dishes, or carelessly placed my personal effects lying around the house (I do not have a reputation for being neat), I will be called upon to see that everything is made right again. If I mispronounce a Russian word or phrase, the teacher in her kicks in to see that I do not butcher this beautiful language any further. Occasionally she makes me recite Pushkin’s poems in Russian over breakfast and dinner, and I would struggle, but all would be well. She hardly knows any English so we communicate by sign language, facial expression, gestures and (my) broken Russian. It helps that I have a roommate who has studied more Russian than I, so she helps with translation when all else fails, but otherwise I am surprised by the ease by which we all manage to communicate. Svetlana is stern but not intrusive, strict but never without reason. Just moments ago she walked into my room and placed a wool blanket over my shoulders; I looked up from my book and was greeted with the smile of a mother. She is in fact a grandmother now, though she lives alone away from her family.

My (real) mother once told me that she treats the tenants in our house like her own children in the hope that I may be treated in the same way when I am living under somebody else’s roofs. It appears her karma points are working quite a bit of magic here. I suppose that makes me more indebted to my mom, and the best way to repay kindness is, of course, to pass it on.

When tomorrow comes it will be a week since I arrived in Moscow. Time flies, and it always seems like there is barely enough time to do everything. Each day I take the metro to the Presidential Academy for my Russian classes which last five solid hours, but it doesn’t feel that long at all when you are blessed with an energetic Russian teacher who makes such a daunting language actually fun to learn. More on these when I have time to blog.

[thewildyeast-blog]

Never judge an apartment by its elevator.

Let's start from where I live.

(view from my window - it's quite pretty on a good day)

Because our olfactory bulb has intimate access to the amygdala - the part of the brain which processes emotion - the sense of smell has the ability to bring back the most distanced memories. The apartment block I live in reminds me of the first apartment block I knew as a two-year-old baby  (my earliest memory came when I was a year and a half old) because it smelled like it. It was musty as an old communist building, and indeed I can find no better way to describe it. It was a distinctive mustiness that I have come to associate with dimly lit echo-y places with unsanded flour grout. Yes, musty as an old communist building  should enter the book of frequently used similes.

At the corner laid a heap of carelessly strewn fliers, and all around there were dust I couldn't see because of the dim lighting. The elevator was one of those that had a metal cage around it, so that the arrival of the lift was always accompanied by a reverberations of vibrating metal. Inside it was a 1.5m by 1.5m box, so  I didn't so much as step into the elevator as I did jostle my way through, even though there was only me and my two luggages and a chaperone. And each time the door shuts a harsh clang echoes throughout the building, as if it were tasked, on top of getting me to the ninth floor, to announce my arrival to the whole world.

Anyway, I didn't have very high hopes for the state of my room after this very friendly introduction to the old apartment block. But my pessimism turned out to be quite unwarranted. To my pleasant surprise, the interior of the apartment was nothing like the exterior. All was warm, clean and the mustiness gave way to the smell of carpets and homecooked food. Especially in Russia, never judge an apartment by its elevator.

I later learned that this interior-exterior world of difference is something decidedly Russian, too. A friend once remarked that the Russians are not very concerned about aesthetics of public spaces, that all around the city and residences rubbish can be found where they should not be, bins have been vandalized by spray painted tags, walking pathways and roads are potholed, and more than once I've had to walk round what I observe to be spit. Step inside the Russian home, and you find the  coziest, cleanest and most put together living space. Step outside, and you enter T.E Eliot's Wasteland.

Russians just don't give a damn about public spaces. Inside their private space, they are neat-freaks; outside of it, little respect toward public property can be expected. Perhaps it's because there are little public funds to maintain upkeep of public spaces, and where there were they had been promptly siphoned off. The more plausible reason might have to do with the general ambivalence of Russians towards public space, and the lack shared ownership over these spaces. Gone were the times when people actually believed in the communes, that the self is responsible for the community and would clean up after each other; today, it's everyone for himself - who cares if the playground swing is broken?

Medvedev made some interesting points about Russians' indifference towards spaces and places - more on that in time to come. 

[thewildyeast-blog]

Increasingly bizarre Belarusian dictator now bans schoolchildren from clapping - The Commentator

Harvard University recently awarded the dictator of Belarus an alternative Nobel prize for mad dictatorial behaviour. That was before he banned school kids from clapping as a "dissident" activity

[thewildyeast-blog]

Prof Medvedev spoke at length about the securitization of Russian politics and public life - the cold war mentality and the image of Russia under siege has never quite left Russia, decades now after cold war. Vladimir Putin still saying old tunes:

“Ensuring Russia has a reliable military force is the priority of our state policy. Unfortunately, the present world is far from being peaceful and safe. Long obsolete conflicts are being joined by new, but no less difficult, ones. Instability is growing in vast regions of the world.”

… and doing something about it: some $755 billion will go to supporting a million active-duty personnel, 2300 new tanks, 1200 new helicopters and planes, and a bunch of satellites and submarines. 

What was astonishing to me was how far Russians themselves have bought into the ‘Russia under siege” narrative: a whopping 46% of Russians are even in favor of increasing military spending even if it leads to an economic slowdown.

Decades after the cold war and the collapse of the USSR, Russia is still harboring ambitions of returning to great power status. 

Too much ego and balls around. Russia needs a female prime minister.

[thewildyeast-blog]

Russia begins here.

It has been one month.

I have hesitated writing or saying anything about Russia for the past month, except intermittently (and privately in letters) about the states of mind I found myself in. It is easy to form an impression, to be too quick to judge... and cementing them in words sometimes reinforce hastily informed half-baked impressions in my head. Now I am at a 1/3 water-mark. It has been here for exactly a month and a half, and I like to think I have gotten beyond seeing Russia as an abstract idea, and that what I've conceptualized as "the wild east" is more than imaginings of snow-covered Siberian plains and incomprehensible Russians. 

Russia leaves me with so much to be said, and now I say them here.