Garh!
For the last 2 days I've had to think abt, clean and pay for stuff to be done to my humble abode.
The kitchen has finally been tiled. Hours were spent chatting with the genuinely very nice tiler becoz I felt it impolite to slink back to bed after the 0700 wake-up call. Tradies are a unique bunch. 0700 on a Saturday is ungodly.
So since then, I've had to clean up (ewwww.... gritty substances coming into contact with my fingers... ewww), do more laundry (aka still cleaning up), and now have finally found time to browse Etsy again while scoffing down 1/4 of a mud cake.
I feel vaguely unwell for various reasons, none of which is genuinely somatic.
I'm balking at the mess contained within my home, the prospect of a party (w/ very few friends), at starting another week at OPH with the world's laziest surgical registrar and at the sun. The sun in particular, for it beats down upon me relentlessly as if to say "you can hide no more" becoz it is spring.
I am nauseated at myself and everything else.
I.. I.. I..
I don't know if I ever mentioned my saddest, most awkward moment in Russia to anyone but the girl who stood with me as it occured.
Maybe that was becoz I never quite lost the sense of disquiet that filled me when it occured.
Outside the Park Kultury metro station, my 'home' train stop, there was a series of little cart-stalls selling a lot of food and one or two with books and magazines.
Sometime into the middle of my stay there, I found myself ever able to drink kvas, a beverage the color of cola that was apparently traditional in some way. It contained a tiny amount of alcohol and carbonation and tasted rather like chinotto in retrospect. I liked the stuff, god knows why, and was queing up to buy a cup when the little old lady approached me.
Tiny and wearing a kerchief, she shuffled up to me, hands cupped. I towered over her like the horrible Western tourist I was and was startled to see her beg. She reminded me of my own grandmother and it appalled me that no one seemed to notice her.
Park Kultury wasn't a tourist hub and we appeared to be the only foreignors around. Perhaps elderly people begging were commonplace for the locals but certainly, they weren't for me. At least not then - in all our weeks there - as this was the first time I'd ever seen a pensioner beg. Not a maimed war veteran, not a gypsy, but an old woman like my grandma.
I fished out my wallet and, forgive me, chose the smallest denomination ruble bill I had. 50 rubles, if memory serves (probably doesn't). I gave it to her tentatively becoz she'd started to move down the kvas queue by this stage.
She took my hand and looked up at me. "Spaciba" she said, eyes meeting mine.
I didn't cry then, confused and startled. But everytime since, the memory has forced tears.
The Russians, at least those I encountered, were not a touchy-feely bunch. Almost surly in their reserve, none of us really had any friendly encounters with the locals outside our lecturers. The last person on earth I thought would take my hand was an elderly Russian woman, forced to beg from a Westernized chink.
I instantly regretted my stinginess. I should have given her more, goddamn it. If she had been my grandmother, wouldn't I have hoped someone would give her more? What would more have meant to me? One less souvenir?
How could someone let their grandmother beg like that? How could any state let the pensions persist without adjusting for inflation? How could any state reduce its old and infirm to begging?
She shuffled away.
I stared after her a moment and then at my feet.
Her face haunts me even now. Her quiet way. Spaciba.
Turns out this happens a lot in modern Russia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/5413226.stm
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