Abu. To Be Who You Are

My thoughts flow was interrupted by the laughter around me not just once, everyone was laughing at Abu jokes. I was the only one who was giving a poor reaction. He had an incredible ability to lead people by his own example and to infect them with his own interest. His approach was so energetically powerful, that even me with no getting a meaning, caught myself smiling. I just nodded my head from time to time like a china doll. His leadership was beyond any descriptions, you could only experience it. My feminine has been charmed by his magnetism, but as I couldn’t understand his words, I just savoured his image and the sound of his voice. Although the failure to get the point of his speech hurt me with some jealousy.

The day full of events has begun with the first stop for breakfast near a roadside inn. They have shown us a washroom and I went there to check the place to have an idea where to send my future tourists to. Under the washbasin, there were small puddles left after cleaning the floor in Indian style, such as pouring water on the sides in the expectation that when the sun rises it would get dry up naturally. Indians never overdo, as well as all Asian though. They are in the hands of never-ending “susigada” or siesta. There’re two fundamental rules they follow: 1) Never do today what you can do tomorrow or not to do at all; 2) Who knew life, that is no longer hurries.

But to any Russian woman of my age, those rules seemed absolutely absurd as we’ve been taught the opposite. “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today” – they said attributing this expression to the uncle Lenin. And if they said so, then it’s not just a rule to follow, but you might be blamed in neglecting with all its consequences as soon as the Party only get a chance.

I washed my hands and was going back already but suddenly I’ve noticed a huge monkey sitting lazily on a tall tree with the crooked branches. Later turned out that it was langur monkey. A black shrivelled muzzle with attentive eyes, a very long black tail, black leather paws with long fingers color red like a Siamese cat. This Hanuman pensively was holding a nut near his teeth until he has suddenly swung his arm back and threw the nut exactly in my forehead. I didn’t have a chance to get out of the way and I slipped on the wet floor, in reaction. There came the sounds of something heavy hitting the floor, and from outside you could note only two legs sticking out from the restroom and raising up like above water in synchronized swimming.

Surely those who have seen that became laughing. I myself felt no pain but the attack of uncontrollable laughter. With whom else that could have happened? But in my head, I thought that it anyway was much better than that story happened to my theatre friend who was sailing on the tour in Kamchatka and the whole way she had spent in the stateroom having terrible attacks of the seasickness. And when she was invited to see the northern lights, she was simply blown away from the deck into the freezing waters of the sea. I was wet, but at least felt warm.

The guys who have come to help me lifted me up carefully and said that the langur had blessed me as a monkey was a holy animal for Indians. They also added that it was a very good sign and I’ve been a chosen one. To my surprise, even the grinning monkey was pointing at me with her long black finger and making some weird sounds either hiccup or laughter. Like in a movie. Well, I’ve been blessed, that’s nice. The clothes dried up as well as the floor, we had breakfast and moved further. And this cartoon episode has drawn Abu and public attention to me, though I felt more like a carnival joker.

All our group except me loved Abu. Because of him the only thing I used to do- was running from one to another with the requests to translate for me one thing after another. But the colleagues simply couldn’t keep up with Abu as an interpreter also needs time, and we didn’t have it enough. I realized that a lot of good and interesting information has been missed. By my colleagues’ reaction, I could understand that he was telling something very important and fascinating and in a very thrilling manner too. All I could do was to admire his artistry, the athletic body and professional skills inherent to a genius.

Sometimes our eyes met and I couldn’t help but have taken my eyes off him. But later I’ve again heard his voice and it has been absorbing all my attention and my thoughts. I looked at his eagle’s profile, the energetic chin, full lips, sparkling almond-shaped eyes full of expression. I couldn’t take my eyes off the grace and confidence he demonstrated every time appearing in public, his accurate gestures, the clear speech and obviously an exceptional sense of humour when even me was laughing together with all the group without understanding what it was about. His laughter was so contagious that it was almost impossible to resist. At some moment it seemed to me that he was the man of my dreams, whom I visualized so many times before but only fair-skinned. At the same time, I felt some pressure because of lacking a common language. I spoke Russian, but Abu didn’t know it. later revealed that he knew eight languages! I felt flawed and hated him with jealousy. Abu was giving a dizzying tour on the aboveground catacombs of the intricate Hampi routes, he spoke out loudly and clearly, looking directly

into the spectators’ eyes.

For a night the organizers got us rooms in a real fancy five-star hotel in a Hospet town from where we were to heading back to Hampi early morning. The organizers made a deal to not close a swimming-pool with fountains and a jacuzzi for us and even to switch on all the illumination as an exception. And we got a chance to swim in the pool, refreshing our tired, dusty sweaty bodies in cool waters under multi coloured rays of light. Here someone got an idea to celebrate this unforgettable day and to have some whiskey before going to sleep, just to chill out a bit at the back of the hotel with a pool view. We all quickly backed this idea up. And that was indeed such a loving evening! We felt so relaxed, had much fun and laughed all the time.

Finally, I’ve had an opportunity to have a good conversation in my mother tongue, to share my stories and to tell about my impressions. I really enjoyed my auditory, they were responsive and getting my sense of humour, we were on the same page. When I was going pretty big, Abu has joined us. And my evening has been finished on that. As soon as he has appeared all focus shifted at him in a flash. And again I was sitting like a doll blinking the eyelashes and couldn’t catch a word. I’ve poured some whiskey, it didn’t make me feel better. Has drunk some more, didn’t help.

Losing all the interest for the party I felt how some kind of self-pity has attacked me and I felt a lump in my throat. And the questions began to arise: “what am I doing here?”, “how will I work in the country without knowing its language?”, “maybe it’s a professional unsuitability?”, “why did I come here?”, “why nobody has listened to me?” I wasn’t used to be on the sidelines. A leader, an actress, an anchor was crying inside me. Wiping my tears with a sleeve, I’ve run away to my room and kept on crying alone. Abu has instantly stolen all attention, and I was just a puppet theatre actress from Russia, with no knowledge of the language, not capable even to get a small talk flowing or to argue.

My roommate Arina has come for me, she tried to pacify me and to bring back. But I really needed to stay alone.

“If you have a bad day, just remember that you can cry. If you need to have a good cry in bed just do it. But don’t forget after that to stand up, pull yourself together and keep on moving forward.” Louise Hay

Someone came in and went out. I didn’t care, I had a good cry and fell in asleep. We all have our own inner battles with the demons and we struggle them with courage. Daily and in our own way. All our efforts big and small deserve praise and applause.

Has it ever happened to you to wake up one morning with a thought that you’ve lost a control over your life and can’t even say what is right and what is wrong? Each one of us has got such days and, believe me, it’s absolutely normal. I’ve discovered, that if to make the decision to change the situation then it’s already a halfway to success. The only thing left is to understand how to do it.

The next morning my eyes have been slits, and I was terrified to meet this new creature in the mirror. It was like an ordinary morning of a Chinese beekeeper. Washing and eyes drops didn’t work out and I was to wear the sunglasses before daybreak. And here went out the ballerina. I’ve left my room like Maya Plisetskaya deceased in Germany in her ninety, and with her words on my lips which has become my morning credo: “All my life I love the new, all my life I look into the future, I always wonder!… Not resign ourselves to the edge is not tolerant. Even then – Fight, fire back in the tube pipes, drums beat… Up to the last moment… My fight win only on that andkeep it up. Character – this is destiny.”

I convinced myself not to give up and not to allow any difficulties to break me down. By that, I learned to accept with equanimity the things which I was not able to change for now. I did my best to put behind my yesterday weakness, my tears and self-sabotage, left the room and followed Arina to the lobby downstairs, where our group was supposed to meet. Sudden of all I noted Abu was coming to me! AAAA!

Where would I get away now? Where to hide? Maybe he was just passing by? But he was not. It was too late for me to back down and nowhere too. If only, to jump into the swimming pool which I tried to avoid. He approached me quickly, gave me his look, that lighted the space in the crack of dawn, and what was the most terrifying, he began to talk to me! Here I had a thought that he was doing that with the purpose to tease me. Yesterday he had already found out that I couldn’t understand him because I didn’t speak English. And now he attempted talking to me again the same language I didn’t know. But he was smiling so sincerely that I couldn’t help but stopped, and that scene crashed into my memory for the rest of my life! I missed the meaning of his words. Nevertheless, I could feel something very warm, kind and full of light in his voice and gestures. And he had been talking now to me personally!

“A heart beats, beats, beats and will find a way to beat everything!” Renata Litvinova. At that time I decided not to react to his words, although I really wanted it. With a silly smile, I didn’t say anything but began to walk faster. Filled with anticipation, I had blown right past him to catch Arina and to ask her about the meaning of Abu words.

“And what did he tell you?” Arina asked.

“Don’t cry, you try. If you want I will help you.” I repeated impatiently trying not to miss a word. Arina translated me his words with a smile.

“So what does that mean? He offers me help? Him?!” I exclaimed while blushing.

“Yes, he wants to help you.”

“And how does he know that I need help? How did he understand that?” I still couldn’t make out what kind of miracles took place now.

“When you left yesterday he asked right away what happened to you and why you ran away so unexpectedly. I came up for you, figured out, went back and told him everything.” Arina explained.

“Don’t cry…” I repeated pensively and… began crying. The salt of gratitude was rolling down from under my sunglasses. But this time that was the expression of my joy through the tears.

I pulled myself together and tried to concentrate; whatever happened, I had to walk with a smile on my face. Life is wonderful; this shouldn’t be forgotten. A beginning is always the hardest part.

The crying morning at the sunrise from the Hemakuta mountain in Hampi turned out into a sensual rise of my soul. My awaken heart was beating some rhythmical melodies echoing Krishnas’ tambourines under the hill. Abu could see me with my own eyes, his sensitivity to another’s pain made him helping me. Before, I used to seek the strength and confidence from outside; I forgot to check within me, while they always were there.

From that day on I noted that my life became exactly the kind that I have always imagined. The world around has become a fairytale, and I am its heroine. The mystical coincidences revealed too many miracles to not to believe in magic. I began to create my new reality. The life transformed. I stepped to the path that led to the return of my integrity, the authentic real me. I awakened after the centuries-long sleep.

At the Hemakuta hilltop at the sunrise in Hampi, I was beginning to meditate, that helped to look deeper within me.

Life was beautiful, and I was open to its novelty. I began to observe my mind and to keep the focus on each given thought, replacing negative thoughts with positive when it’s only possible. I felt much more love and compassion than before. Hampi was now my symbolic place of strength.

“Even a tiny seed of hope is sufficient to sow the field of happiness” Mark Levi. And one more time together with the first rays of the rising sun Osho phrases became dancing in front of me in Shiva Nataraj dance bringing with them the sacred destruction of the past.

Recently, while viewing our photos, one thought struck me: it was always like that with us, and probably our story still lasts somewhere. Someone was taking my picture. And Abu in the background had just walked into my frame accidentally. By accident?

It’s significant to learn not only to give but also to accept gifts, I mean not to refuse help. When we let accept help or some gifts, our heart opens and radiates the energy of gratitude. And the miracles will inevitably happen. And I became to attract new opportunities and a happy destiny like a magnet. All that matters to keep thank God for having this precious privilege to feel, to give and to accept.

And so I got accepted Abu’s offer as a gift. Your teacher is not that one who teaches you, but that one from whom you learn. I’ve found my teacher, my master- Abu. I took his gift so deeply, as deep as I myself was. This sacred miracle of each breath, each heartbeat. This every luminous, vibrant sensation and the tingles in the body. This joy, sadness, an explosion of creativity. This sudden merge and a chance to find yourself in another.

How to recognize your man? Oh, it’s very simple. You will go forward and bump into him in your halfway. He didn’t know. You didn’t call. You were found. And whatever direction you were taking before, now your diverse paths got converged, and you keep on going the one way. There’s nothing neither good nor bad in this world. There’s only our attitude towards things.

You can fall in love with beauty. But love is only the soul. William Shakespeare.

5 – THE NEW LIFE TOGETHER

THERE ARE PEOPLE WITH WHOM WE LOSE TIME. AND THERE ARE THOSE WITH WHOM WE LOSE THE SENSE OF TIME.

“We don’t meet people by accident, they are meant to cross our paths for a reason.” Osho.

I’m absolutely certain, a hundred per cent, that no man appear in woman’s life by chance. Only that man comes to a woman’s life, who matches her internally and externally.

My working tourist season in Goa started as soon as the order from the management came. They said I was to go for my first excursion with tourists the next day, despite the fact that our own tour hadn’t finished yet. The workload was to the eyeballs, weh ad tours non-stop, everyday, sometimes nine days in a row without rest. I was working at my full capacity. Nevertheless, we used to find time for each other. Because, whoever they called the god of love, – Eros, Erotes, Amor or Cupid, had provided the winged boy with a bow and arrows to shoot them when I and Abu first met.

On the other hand, the time spent waiting turned out for us into the catalyst for stimulating our lives for the next meeting. The super intensive work season didn’t let us meet sometimes more often than a couple times a month. We were like two actors from different theatres, who loved each other but were always on tour. But we always comforted ourselves with the thought that any period would come to an end and we both knew when our time would come. We had the rare opportunity to meet on tours in those days when we arrived somewhere together each with his group, let’s say in a restaurant where we brought our tourists for breakfast. Almost all tour routes were drawn up by Abu. Or we met in the tiger reserve where we used to bring our tourists to after elephant rides. After each that very short encounter, we both remembered those moments again and again and took them as the most precious in our lives. Oh, days of innocence, when the world was full of eternal youth, you had already become the mythology of that old time! Sometimes it seems to us, we miss some far away places while in reality, we miss the time we spent there. That’s how time cheats us taking cover behind the mask of space…

Initially, we both were sure that we wouldn’t be able to spend more time together than those rare moments of our tea ceremonies on my balcony between the early pickups for excursions. That time we communicated via our symbolic language of gesture or the “paper with a pencil” language invented by us. In this manner, in addition to all languages of the subcontinent diluted with numerous dialects of other countries, had appeared a new “Abu-Alena language”. With his knowledge of eight languages, Abu was a well-educated Goan and he could afford to speak with me using the ninth one without agonizing about the colonial inferiority complex. India always was affected by influences from abroad. And Nehru, the first prime minister of India, rightly identified that India’s true genius lied within its ability for fusion. Try, however, explaining to a non-Russian, who Snow Maiden is. Or try to understand without knowing English that Jesus Christ’s remains are buried in India, in Kashmir. Our language was a crazy fusion of fun with pantomime, a puppet theatre with ballet and graphics with painting. Such evenings together were well worth living for.

We finally got lucky with a coinciding weekend on St.Valentine’s day. In the evening of 13th Abu invited me to take a ride, to hang out around and to have dinner together. No doubt I agreed. My hands got shaking with excitement, but suddenly I noticed a metallic wardrobe with my clothes which was at that moment half empty inside and half filled with my uniform. Almost all my clothes had been given for laundry. The coming date excited me so greatly that, with the best speed I could, I rushed downstairs to pick up my clean things. And that even helped me to get gained an hour extra for a traditional woman’s dance with changing clothes near the mirror. No, the reflection didn’t bully me with the age; like a little girl I was singing a hymn to the passage of time: “A man of my dream is just like you.”

When I saw his bike’s headlights in a dark alley and heard so familiar “Yamaha” engine sounds closing to me rapidly, my heart was already jumping towards him faster than its master. Like a grasshopper I jumped onto the back seat, the first time in my life holding onto the man I loved. And we rushed through the Goa narrow alleys with the strange sensation of flying, blown with the warm breeze and the tactile closeness. The Goan night accepted our union. Among the hectic movement around we plunged into the flaming sensations stopping the loud roar of the engine, which actually only completed the noise in our heads and filled with excitement each bump in the road.

Together on a bike… It’s the most expanding feelings vehicle. The new story fell into the new path, and we were carried away with the flavours of old plots. One day absolutely accidentally you find yourself in the right place at the right time, and a million paths will cross. Initially, you see your wishes clearly and realize them, and the daily observation of them in this material world will settle you for their fulfilment. Have you ever noticed that coincidences in your life are not random at all?

Abu fasted and I was sipping cocktails losing any sense of time and without being afraid of losing myself forever in the abyss of my love story as if I saw the light of a day without bonds and chains for the first time in my life. We both seemed opened books to each other. When we were reaching the next 24- hour cafe to get a water for Abu and a cocktail for me it was the middle of the night already. When we were turning around the front three young inadequate Indians on one scooter crashed into us and were scattered out on the road right away. But Abu not only could hold the bike with one hand but also caught me in the middle of falling down with another one. Making sure that the incident closed and no one got hurt, I decided that it’s a perfect time for a celebration of my second birthday, though with Abu most probably it was the twenty-second already.

The night was almost over when I got the idea to see the sunrise as we were not sleeping anyway. Taking a deep breath I took Abu to my magic place at the Black Rocks with stunning sea view from where you could not only see the sunrise but also if you’re lucky to watch dolphins and to gaze shooting stars of diamond crumbles falling straight into the ocean. I revealed this place to him as my most sacred viewpoint which I’d never told about any living being. But with Abu, I felt like sharing. The Universe is a field of miracles and only our resistance to see can dull our eyesight. He believed me, smiled and allowed me to bring him there. Sitting at the crack of dawn on the cold Black Rocks and not breathing we sensually explored our body contours experiencing the sweetness of the first shy kisses in the dense milky fog.

The dawn broke extremely fast that morning, not only rocks but also people silhouettes were becoming visible. St Valentine’s morning began. And in spite of I was extremely exhausted and sleepy when Abu dropped me home that morning whispering “See you soon”, I couldn’t help but stay awake, smiling inside and dreaming about my superhero. My mood was lifted up with each second, with each heartbeat until the sun appeared in the sky. I was crazy with joy and fell asleep smiling, seeing dreams where the Caucasus mountains, the Goa beaches rocks and the granite lumps of Hampi were moving, dancing and spinning around together with me.

“Faith can move mountains. But not everyone has faith.” Blake.

I always looked for a man – a teacher who would help me exploring myself. My endless Universe needed a man who wouldn’t walk past the various phenomena of my soul and was able to turn on all my unrealized female modes: a girl, a mistress, a hostess, a queen. But only a king could do that, that’s why I needed a strong man overgrown his childish fears, a mature man who had come to peace with his ancestors’ spirit. A man who would like to be a creator of his woman and ready to create himself a queen out of me. Abu was that man and that’s why he listened so attentively about all my wishes. Abu was the best man I have ever known.

From that day on Abu became the King of my dreams. And I used to show him the royal respect and importance. Abu gave everything that made me happy. Our relation took the form of the decision to live together and we began our common life sharing one apartment and one space. I finally realized that I felt so wonderful and free close to my chosen man. It turned, that Abu was exactly that powerful image from my dreams who could understand woman feelings. Feelings, not words. He gifted me with his warmth. He was the Sun Man, and I was like a flower basking in the sun, in his tenderness, light and care. What an inexhaustibly rich and intricate pattern of a human life!

The most powerful word in the world is “WE”. It inspires, supports, pacifies… It teaches to live not only for yourself. “WE” are better than “me”, than “you”. This feeling gives us the strength to live, to have faith and dreams and what is the most important to love! At one of my exams on scenic design in the theatre institute, I had read a passage from “Exit the King” by Eugene Ionesco. Twenty years ago subconsciously I threw the boomerang with my wishes seeing the meaning of life only in great bright mutual love. In India my wishes became true, all my intentions were fulfilled precisely, in the real material life. I accepted back my almost twenty years old boomerang.