Abu. To Be Who You Are

Borges wrote: “I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.”

Each day spent with Abu I perceived as the entire life. When he used to forget to shave for a few days I called him my hedgehog from “Hedgehog in the Fog”, and he corrected me laughing: “I’m a porcupine.” And we remembered a story when in some Goan cafe after lunch Abu asked me: “How did you like the porcupine? Was it tasty?” Now I can’t say even what I ate then. I always loved to bite my Abu a bit like a dark chocolate. He liked my wild caress and I worshipped not only his soul and mind, but also his body. Feeling exhausted after our amatory exertions we continued our conversation:

– So was the porcupine tasty? You have tried his meat.

– I like everything with you, absolutely everything without exception.

– Do you know why Abu Sufiyan had converted to Islam? He just didn’t like pork. He was a Muslim ksatriy. And in Russia, you like lard as well as bear meat, moose and horse meat.” Abu teased me. And what will be next, Abusha? Cannibalism? Maybe you’re hungry?

– I’m hungryonly about you. Do you know another Abu? Abu Bakar, Mohammed’s disciple and companion. He said, that- God is a woman.

– No, you’re the first Abu I know. Even not the first but the only one. And, you know, sometimes I really feel like a cannibal, like those aborigenes from the Hawaiian islands who ate the Captain Cook, by the way exactly on 14th February 1779, St. Valentine’s day. You’re my alive feast.

And we were laughing and biting each other like puppies.

– Thanks, Alona, you’re my most mysterious manuscript. It’s a challenge for me myself to decipher you. I’m grateful to you for that gift. “Kuskus” in Russian means “kusat’” (to bite)?

– “Kuskus” is not a Russian word, it’s a name of the dish made of semolina and wheat cereals. I tried kuskus in Morocco, Tunis and Italy. And “kusat’” (to bite) is a Russian verb.

And we went to a restaurant for dinner, both really feeling hungry after all that conversation.

Abu was really easy to connect and talk to. He treated any meeting like a friends gathering. It was only because of his own positive attitude and the goodwill toward humans. He had a high degree of confidence in people. Abu was trusting, accommodating, comforting and the easiest man to deal with. And he always left only positive impression. He made others happy, and that made himself even happier. Emotions are contagious. He never was worried about anything, he knew that any anxiety is just wasting of energy and time, and the same was true for taking life with all its problems too seriously. “Alona, why you have to worry about that? Most of your today problems you will hardly remember in a couple of years. And even if you do, you can unintentionally hurt yourself.” He made it easier for me, and I felt good getting another grade of joy from my man’s wisdom.

I was glad for my previous experience and thankful that many lessons we had already digested in our past and separately from each other. Our family was that perfect example where a couple prepared for a relationship before the relationship. Surely all of us have different fates. Someone is able to acquire all necessary knowledge before the fateful meeting, and others have to obtain it together through thick and thin. Sometimes you have to win your happiness back from the fate. We all need time to become mature. Mature for each other. Many are afraid of a breakup, but the level of fear to bring closer is even greater. But we always have to choose the lesser of two evils. Each step towards each other pushes the limits, dissolves your ego, arouses your fear. The weak ones are tended to pull back, stepping backwards or hiding in safety they were used to. But we were already mature, experienced and were not afraid of our love. We had already learned through the self-discovery, how to allow another come closer.

“Love is not passion, love is not emotions. Love is a very profound understanding of the fact that another completes you. The presence of another expands your own presence. Love gives you the freedom to be yourself, it has nothing to do with possessiveness.” Osho.

Sometimes it happened that someone called Abu and he passed the phone to me as if something important had happened. I took it naively, and after had to listen to Hindi music on the voicemail. He always liked to play jokes on me. Like a little girl, I would run after him to catch, punched his chest and arms with my small fists. and our bodies merged. The question of irritation or complaints on Vodafone obtrusive customer service was left back. Abu made a game of everything, was tolerant of any invasion into our private life. We didn’t want children, it was too late already, but Abu made jokes even about that: “If we had kids, they would be zebras.” And before I asked “why?” he already gave an answer: “Because you’re fair, and I’m dark-skinned.” And we laughed again and played horsey, riding each other.

At some point I was beginning to think that I became to understand the way the world works, people and, in particular, men’s emotions, what principles communication rests on, how people interact with the cosmos and it with them, in return, and many other things. It was as if existence itself through India, through Abu revealed to me the new immense knowledge, the new layer of reality. It was like a new birth for me, and I started from scratch. Enlightenment came. Many issues were resolved themselves and others just ceased to arise as if it would be a normal thing. This steady powerful current, the flow of life and incidents. The new age of awareness came to me. Finally, I was there where I wished to be. The chronic anxiety of Russian went away. My confidence in the future in all its brightness and cloudlessness replaced all past worries. It was a golden age of my life. The positive thinking worked as if I was a little kid who is not afraid of anything, but only knows how to be amazed and charmed by this incredible world around.

Clive Lewis wrote: “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

And I read fairy tales aloud, for Abu. It turned out, that exactly stories creating for children are much more meaningful than meets the eye. In each of them, I used to discover something new, unknown, filled with different even more profound meaning. I kept on learning English buying children’s books already of a new level, not “Beginner” but “Elementary”. That was a progress! I was reading them aloud for Abu, and he fixed me and laughed from the heart at my German accent. Especially the word “fact” once made him so much laugh that he fell down on the bed with laughter. But it was a wonderful time for both of us, we learned together, Abu – through teaching and me – through learning. This pure magic unwittingly reflected on our ordinary life too, as together with the language learning we learned to live together going through the adjustment period. All in all, it was a fantastic time of fairy tales.

Abu could and was fond of cooking, and in this subject, he also became my master. Our lessons always were full of fun and joy. One day standing with a hot pot in the hands with steam pouring out of it Abu asked me to pass him “fry pan”. I was in total information vacuum regarding this

unknown word. Trying desperately to please him I began opening the doors of the kitchen cabinets realizing that I had to give him something but WHAT exactly I couldn’t imagine. Every time I turned back to him frightened and offered either a ladle or a strainer. Finally, the luck was smiling on me and I took out the frying pan. Abu sighed solemnly: “Yesss, my darling!” After that, we had some kind of a fun- filled extravaganza. You must admit, that not so often you can find a word “fry pan” in fairy tales, but I worked on my vocabulary through play and learning.

With the end of the season approaching, the workload got down and we had more free time now. A happy home life of the new family got started. We even established our daily routine. We liked to wake up early morning and go to the beach for playing tennis until the sand was not too hot. After half an hour of such intensive fitness, I turned red like a crab, and Abu then announced a small smoke break to get rest and drink some water: “Alona, you again became like a lobster! So, now I declare a break.” Sometimes our friends joined us and then we played Frisbee together. Later we swam in the sea and went back home for taking shower and having breakfast. For both of us, it was a gorgeous time, happy and unforgettable.

The earth rotated in no time, with days and nights full of events which ceased to be divided on dream and reality. They simply came together in a harmonious and diverse happy life full of wonders and unpredictable revelations. I got back to the reality of a child’s perception when each new day brings only fresh emotions.

“The Jungle Book” was opened and we lived our story. However, life in a Moscow flat and in a Goan one is not the same. We both were in the kitchen when we heard some cooing just over our heads and suddenly we lifted our eyes and saw the source of the sound. Our kitchen windows were constantly open, it was a kind of our natural ventilation, and a couple of pigeons had made a nest just in the corner, on the hanging shelf! Now we understood why from time to time bird droppings appeared in our house. Abu quickly dealt with our guests. “Pigeons are number one infection carriers all over India,” he explained. “We let only geckos live with us, although they don’t pay a rental charge.” The nest was expelled.

Goan world of sounds never lets you forget that you live in the jungle, in everlasting summer filled with life and motion. The tropics of Goa are bustling with life round the clock; they smell, quack, coucou, yell, halloo, hoot and even meow. Unidentified loud sounds always seem more high-pitched to us, it’s just how our brain works. When we can’t recognize the source of the sound it either makes us worry or we try to imagine the object which could possibly produce those sounds and to find the reason why it does so. Seeing my interest, Abu told me about birds and even showed me some of them and their natural habitats like images in an encyclopedia with pictures or a full article. Those are meowing birds. Koels are the birds of the cuckoo family and they scream like real March jungle cats. But even their sounds, in the beginning, can be easily confused with peacocks, whose meowing is even more plaintive and shrill. Goa is a region rich for unique creatures of all kinds. The bald eagles which were so stunning to me turned out into the Brahmin vultures which have several species and vary in colour. You can find brown-beige fishers mostly in Calangut, and white-black snake catchers fly in Palolem over the river. An amazing life hack: if snake catchers circle above you that means that there’re snakes nearby.

Even if your apartment is situated in the Goan jungle it’s impossible to not keep your home clean and tidy. The tropical environment of Asia requires to maintain cleanliness at home. You share your space with “two of each species” like in Noah’s ark. The land of my dreams which I was so eager to inhabit brought me more and more wonders and discoveries, and my wise teacher Abu compensated all life turmoil by constant fun and the unceasing sense of humour. Things gave us a thrill by the natural joy.

Instead of being irritated I took my energy even from not very pleasant things. Mosquitoes always started their dinner with me, even if there was a company of eight people on the balcony. Abu hunted them and beat the walls barehanded leaving blood-red spots on the walls. Later together we used to take wet sponges and washed away those cartoon traces of the murder. And Abu with his constant smile along with seriousness noted proudly: “It’s not my blood. Because mine is blue, and that one is red.”

Giant bees made a hive just straight above our window, it looked like a carving clay pot. With a fishing rod, Abu torn apart the beehive and took away a big wax piece the size of a pottery wheel. Taking precautions he got wearing glasses for building and a raincoat and looked like a one-eyed Minion. Filling up with repellent all the house we ran off to the beach. When we back in the evening we had to sweep the half-dead tiger-striped cover away from the white tile floor. Abu had stepped on one bee but tolerated the pain heroically without a sound. He just in his style commented that he’s not Winnie the Pooh. One bee we still hadn’t noticed and our friend Keith got stung by it. We barely saved him from the allergies.

By the way, the tile floor is one more interesting feature of such areas. Wood, metal and other corrosive materials are deteriorating rapidly during monsoon season. That’s why it’s more practical to use stone or ceramics. Tile floor is done almost in all Goa apartments. Many appreciate a pleasant coolness on hot days it gives. But there’s a danger too, which Abu as always had demonstrated by his own example. Taking a shower with his feet in soap, once he couldn’t keep balance on a wet slippery tile floor and fell down. While falling down he bumped his jaw on a washbasin and knocked out a tooth. Stood up, did spit, finished his shower with no screaming and panic.

He left the bathroom gloomy, wet, feeling sick from his recent fall. He went to bed without any complaining, just showed me a fresh hole inside his mouth. Bent over him I gasped in shock, and he with a smile started singing “My way” of Armstrong. And then he announced: “All is well, my darling. The great falls change people. I can speak and even sing, the diction hadn’t been affected.” I was looking at the changes in his teeth quantity in a state of tension and astonishment by the fact that it didn’t touch Abu at all. I sighed and told him: « I wish your chewing abilities wouldn’t disappoint you too. But you’re a guide, and anyway, you need nice teeth. You’re not an elephant whose teeth changes up to six times a life, but a 21st-century human who has an opportunity to place implants. And Abu sang again with his hearty laughter: “Life is plastic, this is fantastic.” I never felt bored with him.

People meet not by accident. Every meeting carries some meaning, but what exactly it does mean we often can’t guess. We already knew that we bear some significant information for each other, the revelation.

Pyotr Mamonov said: “Every human being you meet in life is an angel. He’s your helper and you’ve met him not by chance. He tests or loves you. There can’t be another.” We did love and were each other’s angels.

At times Abu was galloping from one room to another with a slipper in his hand trying to get a cockroach. Besides, that Indian cockroaches are huge, they also can fly. Abu knew that they multiply uncontrollably and he didn’t let them in our house. But ants caused me most troubles. Just a drop of something sweet and ten minutes were enough to get invaded. Usually, they intensify before monsoon starts. Intuiting the coming of hungry and difficult times, the running crowds of these insects store all around, what their hardworking feet can only get. I had an allergy for them, almost same as Keith with bees.