Upon arrival at the international airport, Alyona paid by the meter, out of her last remaining hundreds – 84 rupees. In Goa for such a trip, she would have paid a minimum of 500 rupees. Here, although it’s the second capital, but still not Goa, so the prices are different, more humane, but this applies only to taxis.
At the counter it suddenly became clear that the Brussels Airlines’ ticket allows you to carry only one luggage with no more than 23 kg. Alyona began to panic, definitely, this was not her day. But what to do now? How to pack the travel bag with things necessary for her such as: brushes, stands, palettes…? It won’t just fit in an already jam-packed suitcase. Here the panic gave way to the already gone tears, and Alyona got hysterical again. The girl left the queue, trying to gather her thoughts and understanding that the issue somehow needed to be resolved.
The solution was as usual banal with no place for any novelty, resulting in the sum of 7100 rupees for the second luggage. She was forced to change money at the ugly rate.
Hardly managing to stand, she paid, and finally, getting rid of unbearably tiring suitcases, she got two tickets at once: Mumbai – Brussels and Brussels-Moscow.
Sitting on the last row with double seats in front of the toilet, the girl cringed under the blanket. She was feverish from the extreme bitter cold of her native land and from the thoughts about her future destiny. The stress suffered over these weeks and from the events of the previous day, took its toll. The girl spent the whole flight half-asleep, half-delirious. It was dark in the porthole. All the way it seemed to her that Abu was so close, that he was hugging her and singing a lullaby, comforting her that even nine hours passed like one. Abu came to her dreams, talked to her, joked, smiled, she broke away from this wishful dream to refuse the food offered on the flight, to cry a little and to again fall into the sweet oblivion, where her man was – so alive, so close and cheerful.
Finally, the plane landed in Brussels. The frosty air forced the lungs to exhale the steam – a long-forgotten and unpleasant feeling for her, along with an instant allergy to the cold, it made all her essence shudder from the fingertips to the very top. As if a thousand frosty needles pierced her whole body at once, causing her shoulders to jerk convulsively.
A hours later, after accelerating, the plane took off from the land of a calm sleepy Belgium. In the porthole the dawn was already peeping, and one could see huge electric windmills, green grass interspersed with monograms on the road. The sun, appearing from behind the horizon, heartily blinded through the porthole, but warmed-it did not. The senior pilot announced not a happy news: in Moscow it was minus seventeen. After two hours of flight crystals of snowflakes appeared on the window’s panes. They sparkled beautifully, like white stars against the blue sky, and the sun lit them up like a theatrical ramp. They were so beautiful, even tender, but so cold. At that moment Alyona thought that not in vain, apparently, Schopenhauer had said:
“Of all the worlds available, the world, which we live in, is the worst”.
And that it was not for nothing that he was called a pessimist. Probably, he suffered in this life too.
2 – DISCOVERY OF INDIA
For happiness it is undoubtedly more important what is in a person than what a person has. Schopenhauer And there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9
From the beginning, knowledge is present in every man. The game is how to extract them, these fossils of a soul? There are no guidelines. Therefore, you must deal with the rationalization of your own “I” yourself. In the process of creating a new avatar of yourself everyone has to face a lot of doubts. This is normal. The only thing I have not learned to cope with is my own lunar dependency. The most powerful full moon in my life has always influenced the course of events. Bioenergetics and astrology are powerless over simple human life, as it is impossible to systematize in synthesis.
During different phases of the moon, my sensitivity is aggravated at times to physical pain. Emotions are at peak. It becomes impossible to curb my morbid emotionality. I become harsh, hostile and resolute. The full moon causes the greatest ups and downs. There is a persistent desire to reach the top, even if this choice is a mistake. I want to seek and take risks. Impulses are incorrigible. It is time to realize the most hidden desires and plans. It is beyond me to stabilize the emotional condition at such a time. How else can I explain the miracles and my visions coinciding with the full moon?
Like the ones of Jorge Luis Borges, who became my favorite writer. Since the moment his books came into my hands, I came to believe in a network of diverging, converging and parallel trails. The illustration of these labyrinths was my own life. His characters, like me, never sought the meaning of life, they never forgot that the likelihood of a person finding his justification or some distorted version of it is nil. They simply lived and enjoyed life, avoiding any kind of system and rules. Do they have their own hierarchy? No. They are free from systems. Languages? Any spoken syllable in one of the languages means the mighty name of God. When I read the plot “The Rose of Paracelsus”, it became clear that my society, family and surroundings made some hideous medical history out of its life, and from its gifts – some misfortunes. It’s foolish to change the world that was not created by us. Revolution must be done in our own evolution.
The day you were born doesn’t matter, but the day when the light appeared in you. As soon as I formulated for myself a specific goal, a task, miracles started happening. There were means, opportunities and time for its implementation. No doubt, we ourselves draw our own lives, and no matter what kind of artist you are, the color of thoughts is important.
Before my first visit to India I had already managed to get two educations (middle and higher) – direction and acting; to get married and divorced; to give birth, raise and send a son to the army; to work in different theaters as an actress; to leave the theater for nowhere. I tried out my strength in film crew and as a film actress. The entire search did not give my longings the desired effect. More often, I would close my eyes and concentrate on efforts to stop the shaking from the irritating reality that surrounded me. It would seem that I was surrounded by an apartment with European-quality repair; I had my own foreign car, an interesting and well-paid job, a lively and healthy husband, a son serving in the Airborne Forces, the prestigious armytroops, and a happy stable and prosperous life. But that is an outsider’s view.
I began to dream more often of a distant country from school memories, where fantasies do not masquerade as real people, but are quite real, and I can interact with them. Dreams became more and more colorful and filled with new details until I finally came to believe in them and did not allow myself to take them as the reality itself. The illusions of my sandy sea shore, colorful exotic trees, unusual entities, metamorphic characters – all weaved into one and enjoyed life with me. Reflecting on dreams opened a desirable and exciting world and led to a flow of thoughts that triggered my intentions to be where they existed. I liked their mystical captivity. There, in my fairy-tale country, birds flew; the light was so pure that it seemed to resonate within me, ringing like music, echoing “OM” in velvety low-frequency male voices.
And coming back from my dreams, I again found myself in a worldly Moscow, on a flat land. Here nothing took off, and the noise quickly wore you down with its cacophony of roaring cars on the Moscow Ring Road, the growl of aircraft landing in front of my windows, the creaking of the metal structures of the garbage truck, people’s voices, squealing of children and slush under the dark low gray sky. I blinked not from the bright glitter of my dreams, but from the monotonous repetitive reality of the urban technogenic world of robots.
And I again got behind