THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Russian women married to men in this city, at least the ones Expresso encountered at the Taj Residency on Monday, are a lucky lot. The chances of them facing the wrath of their mothers-in-law is virtually non-existent.
Anna seems lucky not because she was the only Russian with a ‘sindoor’ on top of her forehead, but because she understands only Russian, nothing else, not even English.
``So even if my mother wants to raise her voice, it won’t register on Anna,’’ her husband Vinod Shankar said.
Then there were two Svetlanas, Manoj Khan’s and Rangan’s wives. They, it seems, are spared because they spend most their time in their native places.
Manoj’s Svetlana is in the city only for three or four months in a year, to be with her husband and son. (The couple’s two girls, Nastya and Anya, study in Ukraine while their son, Dennis, studies here, in Christ Nagar School).
Rangan’s Svetlana, because the couple is settled in Volgograd some 200 km south of Moscow, comes here only once in a year.
The result is, both these women have only nice things to say about their in-laws. There was a fourth lady, a second Anna, the wife of Technopark-based techie Rubin. She has not yet reached a stage where she could even imagine her mother-in-law hurling a dark word at her. It is just three months since she got married to Rubin.
The four Indo-Russian couples got together for a ``cultural osmosis’’ - as Balachandra Menon, the guest of honour at the event, put it - organised by the Russian Culture Centre at the Taj Residency here on Monday.
``The idea is to give such couples a platform to come together and share their feelings. We plan to do this in Kochi and Kozhikode also,’’ said Russian consul general Ratheesh C. Nair, who inaugurated the event.
Two of the couples had met as students of professional colleges in Ukraine and Russia. Manoj Khan bumped into his Svetlana while doing his medicine course in Ukraine. Rangan came across his Svetlana while studying engineering in Moscow.
Vinod Shankar’s Anna was not his collegemate. She was a psychologist working with mentally-challenged children. It was Anna’s commitment that attracted him, Vinod said. They married just two years ago. In fact, they had been dating for nearly a decade. ``Ours was a late marriage because Anna wanted to look after her ailing mother. For Anna, her mother’s happiness came above that of her’s,’’ Vinod said.
Rubin’s affair was a new-age one. He met his Anna through the net. Being a techie, he had to work late into the night and so feared he would not be able to find a ``good Christian girl’’. He found salvation on the net. ``I saw her profile in a Christian site and proposed right away,’’ Rubin said.
Anna, a gold medalist and a lecturer at a university in Moscow at just 22, first thought this Asian guy was a ‘’nut case’’. But after a few rounds of chatting, she took the decision of her life. She abandoned her country and her high-profile job to marry the Asian. ``A hundred years ago our cultures were similar. Then, the women in our country loved to take care of their husbands and raise their kids. Those were the good times,’’ Anna said with a twinkle of a girl who had rediscovered a long-lost utopia.
Balachandra Menon asked Anna whether she knows any word in Malayalam.
``I know a phrase,’’ she said.
``What is that,’’ Menon wanted to know. ``Njan ninne snehikkunnu,’’ she said.
Anna plans to live in the city. She would even teach her children in the city schools. Mr and Mrs Vinod Shankar too would do the same. ``After liberalisation, things in Russian have turned really bad. I would like my children to study here,’’ Vinod said.
Dennis, the eldest son of the Manoj Khan-Svetlana couple who studies in a city school, said he ``likes and does not like India’’.
``I like it because it is my father’s place and I don’t like it because it is hot. Not only is this place hot but it is also very dirty,’’ the fifth-standard boy said.
However, heat is the only thing that worries his mother and the other Russian ladies. This was why his mother Svetlana decided to live most of the time in Russia. Had it not been for the heat, her two girls too would have studied with their brother in this city.
trivandrum@epmltd.com
