Mologa. Russian Underwater World.

Once, long time ago, there was a town at Volga River. It was called Mologa and many people came here every year for brisk trade fairs and spectacular carnivals. But an evil water spirit got jealous and sent violent waves to erase a beautiful city from the Earth…

That’s how we can start a sad fairy-tale about Russian city Mologa. Or more precisely, about an eternal war between a merciless technical progress and a natural way of living.

Mologa was a well-known city in Russia since the 12th century. In 1321 there was organized a whole principality called Molozhskaya. Having a very convenient location (on the junction of two rivers – Volga and Mologa), this city became pretty quickly one of the most important Russian trade centers with the Asian countries.

As the time was going, there were built factories and banks, monasteries and churches (there was an impressive temple on the main square), libraries and cinema. What is even more important, there were 900 houses with 7 thousand people peacefully living in them.

Nevertheless, on the 14th of September, 1935 Soviet government decided to start building  Rybinsk Reservoir and Rybinsk hydroelectric plant. Mologa was destined to be flooded. 130 thousand people (including nearby villages) were forced to move to Rybinsk.

This painful process was prolonged for 4 years. Sure, people were said that it was necessary for the industry and transport; that it had to be done for the sake of their country. Personally, I’m just trying to imagine, how it feels to see your city where you grew up, where you worked, where you used to watch movies and read in the library, goes under water street by street, stone by stone.

Most of the houses were taken apart, moved to Rybinsk and assembled again. Others were just blown up as many churches. The Leushinsky monastery was left out though, and its walls stuck out right from the water till they were destroyed by ice and waves.

This August the water level dropped in the Rybinsk Reservoir, exposing the remains of what used to be a lively city. It also reveals old questions: was the result worth this sacrifice? Were there other ways, less radical, of solving the problem of the reservoir? 

P.S. More pictures on the topic here: http://www.pravmir.ru/mologa-gorod-utoplennik-kotoryiy-inogda-vozvrashhaetsya/ 

Ordinary story (from some Russian newspaper)

 The sea in August is warm and soft. And caressing like a mom. Sasha comes here, at the beach, early in the morning, as her doctor prescribed. She believes that somewhere there, overseas, there are beautiful countries and close-knit families.

At first, she was taken and then returned. Then taken again and returned again. Taken… and left in peace for now.

She is 15 now and she is ready to be returned again.

Sasha’s current mom is the third one in row, not counting the biological one. She is nice and a little tired. She adopted Sasha a year ago. As it often happens (nobody knows why), only in a few months after Sasha moved in with her new family her new mom got pregnant.

The baby was two months old when Sasha was sent to a children camp to spend the whole summer at the sea.

In the children camp Sasha felt sick and it turned out to be not the heat stroke, but pregnancy.

Her new mom is shocked but tries to defend a girl when the camp administration tells her about Sasha’s pregnancy on the phone. She says “can you imagine what a poor girl had to go through?” However, she refuses to take Sasha home till the end of summer.

Camp’s doctor Svetlana, a kind woman, takes Sasha to do all the tests and even let Sasha live in her house to give a girl some rest, physical and psychological.

Sasha accepts Svetlana’s help and tries to be nice. She is used to have some nice woman periodically appearing in her life. Till Sasha destroys everything herself. Like this time with her new mom: Sasha got pregnant and let her down.

Sasha’s third mom calls again, cries and asks Sasha to have an abortion. Sasha yells back that she will keep the baby. She just has a bad temper; everyone suffers from her.

Some kind people in Moscow look for a special center that works with pregnant teenagers for Sasha. These centers ask for a paper from a social department. Sasha’s new mom is afraid of losing Sasha and a child allowance if the social department would learn about the pregnancy.

… The sea in August is warm and soft. And caressing like a mom. Sasha comes here, at the beach, early in the morning, as the doctor prescribed. She believes that somewhere there, overseas, there are beautiful countries and close-knit families.

“I’ll have this baby”, Sasha whispers angrily and resolutely. “You will, Sasha, - responds Svetlana, - you won’t let him down”. It’s getting lighter, and the sea finally lets the sun rise into the sky. 

Math error

I like the Macedonian word for “together” – заедно. It literally means “as one”. It’s so much better than its English, French or Russian equivalents: “together”, “ensemble”, and “вместе”. None of them gives this great idea of two (or more) becoming one. One mind, one soul, one way. I’m not far away from you because you are inside me. Because I don’t know where you are and where I am anymore. We are the one. 

P.S. You know, Math has never been my strong point…

***

I was in America when my grandma died just a week before my birthday. I talked to her a couple of days before that and she asked me to call her on my birthday so she could wish me nice things. I couldn’t be at the funerals so I came to her village in summer. As always.

My family always visited her in summer because she lived two days by train and an additional hour by bus away from us. I recalled the usual excitement growing inside while the bus was getting closer to the village. She would always come outside at the gates to greet us, while I would run to hug her.

This “grandma’s south” always had specific, sunny smell and taste. I drowned into it this time too as soon as I got out of the train. Everything was the same: the bus left from the same place at the same time, fields and villages looked the same from the bus window, my grandma’s neighbor and best friend was sitting on the same bench waiting for the bus. That’s why it’s hard to believe that there is no grandma anymore. Her house still keeps the feeling of her presence even though there are no pictures of my grandpa on the walls and a huge pile of bookshelves up to the ceiling is empty (my dad sent the whole library to their house).

It’s hard to believe that me and her, we wouldn’t lie in bed next to each other and I wouldn’t tell her all about my “loved one”. She wouldn’t ask me “How much do you love him?” and wouldn’t tell me about grandpa who always stayed the one for her.

Last year I came alone because my dad and my sister came later. While waiting for the bus I decided to buy my grandma flowers. I have never brought her flowers before. I was so happy and proud of myself: finally I was a grown-up, I worked, and I could afford buying my grandma a huge bunch of lilies. She sat at the bus stop waiting for me, and I could barely see her behind my bouquet.

It all feels unnatural now: my sister standing at the stove and cooking instead of our grandma, me sitting in grandma’s favorite chair, my nephew excitedly reciting a poem that grandma couldn’t hear…

I don’t know how to name this post. What I know is that there is no point in being sad and depressed, even if at the moment you are not together with someone you love. It’s an infinite happiness to know that somewhere LIVES the person you love and who loves you. It means that there is always someone to share your feelings and thoughts with, someone to support you when life is hard, someone who is waiting for you. It means that there is always tomorrow.

Everything can be changed and fixed while the person is alive. After there is only grief left.