Saturday, November 7, 2009

LIFE IN RUSSIAN HOSTEL-2

HOT SHOWERS IN THE HOSTEL

We lived in a four storied building identified as Foreign Students Hostel.You must be wondering why I am writing about HOT Showers is in many undergraduate hostels there were no showers. Many of the Indian students living in such hostels used to come to our hostel regularly for a shower!

The showers were located in the ground floor. The showers were working round the clock. Three days were reserved for girls and the remaining days were for boys. Sunday was for girls when all the girls in the hostel used the shower. Many used the showers once a week.

We Indians used the showers all the seven days in a week. Russians used to ask us why there is necessity to take bath everyday when we don't sweat. With so many clothes we were wearing to protect ourselves from cold we were sweating inside. Moreover many Indians are accustomed to take bath every day. So we continued our daily routine. We invariably showered just before going to bed. There were about six showers and all of us showered in our birth day suit. Initially it was embarrassing but we got used. Just to mask their bad body odor they Russians used cheap scents which only enhanced their bad smell.

Friday, November 6, 2009

LIFE IN A RUSSIAN HOSTEL-1

KGB IS WATCHING YOU

Last time I had written that we had to share a room with a Russian who did not know English. Invariably he was a member of the communist party. His main job was to keep a watch on who comes to meet us and how often we meet. In addition we used to visit Indian Embassy twice a week to collect our mail. His job was to inform KGB how often we visit the embassy and what type of mail we got. He always questioned about our attitude to Soviet way of life. Our standard answer was we like USSR. After we suffered his company for one or two years he was shifted to other new comers room.

Another ploy employed by KGB was to call us on telephone and accuse us of having an affair with a Russian girl and they have enough evidence to prove it. If we accept it then they will blackmail us that they report the Indian Embassy and ensure that we will be sent back. If we agree to cooperate with them when we go back to India, they will hush the whole thing up and we can continue as usual. When we faced such a situation our seniors had already warned us that we should abuse the caller and tell the caller that we are being harassed we are bringing this to the notice of our Embassy. Then such calls will stop. They did not want our Embassy to know that we are being watched.

Other than such minor incidents life in USSR was very interesting. We were free to roam freely in Moscow.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Government of India Scholarship

LEARNING RUSSIAN LANGUAGE


I was a Research Scholar in Indian Institute of Science working for my M.Sc degree in Mechanical Engineering. I had applied for a scholarship to do Ph.D from a Canadian University. I was offered a scholarship with a condition that I must produce a letter from my professor that I have submitted my Thesis for M.Sc. Unfortunately I could not get such a letter and for no fault of mine I lost the opportunity to study in Canada.

After completing my degree I got a job in CSIR and left for Durgapur in West Bengal.CSIR encouraged us to apply for Government of India Scholarships to study abroad. Countries such as U.K, Canada, West Germany, USSR were offering scholarships to Indian Scholars to pursue Ph.D programs in their country. Children of influential people cornered scholarships to study in the West but people like me had to be contented with scholarships offered by USSR and other countries. By the time I finished my Ph.D I was glad that I went to study in Moscow.

When I went to Moscow I did not know one word of Russian Language. We were assigned to various professors depending upon what topic we wanted to specialise for Ph.D programme. Since we did not know Russian language we were asked to learn for six Month's Russian language. Hence we were directed to the Russian language faculty. One young and beautiful Russian girl was assigned to teach six students. Perhaps assigning a young and beautiful teacher was sort of incentive for us not to bunk classes. The teacher knew English well.She used to talk to us in English for few weeks and once we learnt to recognise alphabets she stopped talking to us in English and switched over to Russian. We had tutorials lasting for about six hours a day for five days in a week. Further we were loaded with enough home work to last for another four to five hours. We were put up in a hostel and your room mate is a Russian who could not speak one word of English.Hence we were forced to communicate with him in our broken Russian which also helped us to learn Russian faster.Later we learnt that he was put up with us more for spying on us than to help us to learn Russian.

We went to buy daily necessities such as bread, butter jam etc. We will pick up the article and ask the sales girl its name and write down and in this way we learnt names of commodities which were not taught to us in class room.

My Professor insisted that I must come to the faculty after Russian classes. He introduced me to the fellow scholars and workers. The workers taught me the names of tools such as wrenches. screw driver, file etc. which were not taught in the Russian class room. In addition they taught me slang language without teaching the meaning which I used in one of my Russian classes. The teacher was shocked and asked me to repeat the word which I repeated without being aware of the meaning.She asked me who taught this slang and I told her the workers in the lab. She asked me whether I knew the meaning. I said no. She let it go at that but complained to my Professor that in the company of workers I am learning vulgar language. The professor warned the workers not to teach me vulgar language. When I fully learnt the language I understood what I had uttered and was ashamed of it. But I was not to be blamed.

Russian grammar is similar to Sanskrit grammar. In Sanskrit grammar we have "ekavachana, dwivachana, and bahuvachana". In Russian Language also we have "ekavachana, dwiavchana and bahuvachana" In Sanskrit the verb changes with number and gender. Same in Russian also. Hence Indians had no difficulty in accepting that the verb changes with gender and number. But students from Vietnam, France and even U.K had a lot of difficulty to accept that verb changes with number and gender.

There are a number of words in Russian which are similar to Sanskrit words, For example, OGON in Russian is AGNI in Sanskrit, VADA in Russian is UDAKA in Sanskrit, SYESTRA in Russain is SAHODARY in Sanaskrit etc. Hence it was not difficult for Indians to accept that verb changes with gender and number.

In addition to teaching Russian, our teacher took us to Museums, Ballets and plays. Next day she would ask us to narrate in our own words what we saw. We were asked to read the news paper and narrate in our own words what we have understood.

With such rigorous training in Russian for six months we were ready to enter our faculties. But learning Russian never ended. The technical language we have to master was a different kettle of fish. Here the colleagues and professors helped us a lot and we can never forget their love and affection.