Memoirs of Antares

Глава 1

Antares

Antares is a massive, fiery star that carries the power to destroy the old world for the sake of an inevitable rebirth from the ashes, just like a Phoenix. When this energy awakens within you, it becomes impossible to resist. It forces you to burn bridges and stubbornly create your own universe. It is under this very name that I am writing my memoirs.Most people live a life completely different from the one they once secretly dreamed of. They silently settle for less: meekly enduring nitpicking, swallowing grievances for years, and extinguishing their inner light for the sake of a hated job. They resign themselves to a perpetual lack of money, a dull routine, and even the flaws in their own appearance, burying their childhood dreams alive in this daily pretense.But a completely different spirit has always raged inside me since childhood—a fierce disagreement with this bland reality. My heart refused to play by anyone else's rules. It was this Power of Disagreement that awakened a proud Lioness inside me, the one who flatly refused to sit in a cage of compromises. My inner creator spread its wings, broke through the forced plot, and drew me across the oceans. This force paved my way through a round-the-world voyage and forced space to bend, allowing me to travel half the world, create a fairy tale in reality, and reach for the actual stars.My faith in the magic of the frame began at the age of two, when it seemed to me as if a man from the television screen was speaking to me personally. Of course, it was just a fleeting childhood illusion, but for my impressionable nature, it became so tangible and powerful that I ran to my parents at full speed to announce: "The man on the screen just told me something!"I grew up with a deep understanding that this world is capable of speaking to me directly through the screen, dreams, and books. My imagination knew no bounds: I loved reading specifically those books that had been adapted into films, and my own dreams felt like episodes of some thrilling series, serving as intuitive guidance.

That is why, looking back, I called this trait of my impressionable nature Cinema Magic.Seeing how destiny unfolded its plots following my visions, in defiance of all circumstances, I realized that it was Cinema Magic and the Power of Disagreement that made my life look like a movie. Every single story here is worthy of a full-length feature film and an Oscar, and one of the brightest flashes along this path was an incredible crossing of paths with the main Indian star who lit up my sky. All the events in this book, all the cities and people in the frame, are absolutely real. But all the feelings, down to the very last drop, are entirely my own. These are the feelings shaped by my deep, impressionable nature. My story is still far from over, but I will not reveal all the plot twists in advance. I simply invite you into this amazing, honest, and romantic voyage of my life…

A Window into Bollywood

It all began on a damp, chilly evening on October 20, 2012. Outside the window stood a bleak, endless Russian autumn that brought on a sense of melancholy, so my sister and I decided to warm up the twilight hours and turned on an Indian movie called "Kites". I wasn't expecting anything special, but this film literally turned my perception of cinematography upside down. I was stunned—by this piercing love story, the flawless acting, and the incredible, luxurious production.From that very autumn day, I realized that I was unconditionally hooked on modern Bollywood. In a short span of time, I watched every single movie featuring Hrithik Roshan. I was charmed by him to the depths of my soul. Watching this wonderful actor and magnificent dancer was a pure pleasure that instantly satisfied my aesthetic needs, bringing joy and brightening the cold, lonely evenings, becoming a small window into a vibrant world of love and hope.Gradually, this passion grew into a warm family tradition with my little daughter, and for the next two years, we immersed ourselves in Indian cinema only together. I considered such gentle, wise, soulful, and colorful stories to be intuitively beneficial for a little girl, essential for forming a pure and bright worldview. Watching these films turned into our sacred shared pastime: together we empathized with the characters, cried and rejoiced over the screen dramas, and sang and danced right there in the room. This brought us incredibly close, building an invisible bridge of absolute trust between mother and daughter.

The turning point came in 2015 while we were watching the movie "Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage". At the 14:30 mark, Hrithik looked from the screen—seemingly straight into my eyes, piercing the darkness of the room with his gaze—and spoke words that were vitally necessary to me at that exact second: "I believe that God plans the life of each of us. He knows and He decides where, when, with whom, and how we will meet. Perhaps He has planned something for us. Let's see how exactly He will arrange our meeting. Sometimes it's best to leave it to His discretion… I dream a lot, and perhaps in my dreams, I have already met you."At that time, I was very lonely. My life consisted of deep spiritual development, searching for my purpose, and a longing for a true soulmate. At that very second, my entire body began to shake. It was a very intense, physically tangible sensation, as if a stale, rigid shell that I had locked myself into over long years of loneliness was being torn away from me. This armor, which had protected me from the outside world, just slipped away in an instant, leaving me completely defenseless before this rushing tide of hope. My throat caught, my heart pounded right at my throat, and I burst into such intense, bitter sobbing that I frightened my daughter. The little girl ran over, began to hug me, comfort me, and cried along with me, not understanding what was happening to us.In that moment, Hrithik reminded me of a personal Jesus descending from the screen straight into the room, bearing glad tidings, and I believed him unconditionally. It felt completely as though he had reached his hand out to me through space and quietly said: "Do not be afraid, trust me." I perceived him as a symbol of hope, as tangible proof that romantic men do exist. I desperately wanted my man to be like this hero in his ability to dream openly, to be wide open to the world, and to preserve that pure, childhood naivety that did not fade with the years and which I myself possess in full measure.I wasn't in love with Hrithik himself, but rather with the image of his noble characters. Moreover, I was fully aware that in real life he was married and had two wonderful boys; I built no illusions and simply rejoiced that such a person existed on earth, proving that romance was not dead. The armor of my loneliness shattered in a single moment. That evening, it felt as though I awoke from a long sleep and remembered my most cherished childhood dreams. A fragile hope came alive inside, and I began, little by little, to believe that real magic and fairy tales do exist in this world. Sitting on the floor in my daughter's embrace, amidst the bleak Russian autumn, I wished with all my heart for this fairy tale to come true one day and for me to find my way into it.

The Dream Board

I have always been a person of action. Fruitless, empty daydreams and passive waiting for a miracle—that is definitely not about me. Besides, by this point, I had already gone through a great number of different practices and knew that some of them actually worked. One of them was a dream board. On an ordinary piece of cardboard, I carefully attached photographs of beautiful places and things that inspired me—the Maldives, the majestic Iguazu Falls, pictures of beautiful interiors and renovations. And right there, on top of all that, I placed a photograph of Hrithik. At that period, he wasn't a specific man I was pining for. His image on the dream board simply became a sacred symbol of that very new level of life, beauty, and talent that my soul instinctively yearned for. I made this board and peacefully let the thought go.Almost immediately after that, space reacted: I was unexpectedly offered a trip to Moscow for a serious women's training seminar, and I accepted without hesitation. In the capital, we did a ton of different meditations. And during these classes, the most vital and solid understanding came to me: I am worthy of more, and I will never again be able to settle for less. I reclaimed my inner right to be the master of my situation and was firmly determined to get what I wanted from this life, or to become the kind of woman who would get it.There was another important detail at the training that just settled in my memory as valuable information. Our mentor explained how to behave properly if fate ever brings you together with a high-status man. He taught us that in such a situation, under no circumstances should you slide into the behavior of a fan girl. I simply remembered it back then.I was returning home completely renewed. And it was this inner state that helped me take a step I would never have dared to take before. I realized that I no longer wanted to return to my stable but already soul-crushing job on the ship. I simply walked away from it and stepped into absolute nowhere. With no guarantees, no contracts in my pocket, and no understanding of what tomorrow held for me.And it was then, left alone with myself and my silence, that I truly realized that a continuous inner dialogue is always going on between my dream and reality. I understood that I just needed to allow myself to have what I wanted and stop standing in my own way. I fell silent inside and allowed that deep intuitive call to unfold completely—the one that came through my strong, unyielding desire and stubbornly led me toward the unknown…Sitting in this unfamiliar, frightening emptiness, but at the same time feeling the taste of intoxicating freedom, I involuntarily began to look back, trying to trace the roots of this wild faith of mine. Where does this persistence in me come from? Why am I so stubbornly convinced, against all logic and common sense, that I am meant for something greater? My whole life, I was told the exact same phrase: "You want too much." Relatives, teachers, this whole predictable world around me tried to ground me, lower my standards, and force me to settle for less. But my inner "Self" always refused to accept it. To understand where this power came from, let's turn the page and look right at the very beginning—back to where the four-eyed girl Anyuta, in the middle of a noisy Soviet communal apartment, was just learning to defend her right to want the absolute maximum from this life, and where the roots of her magic were just beginning to grow…------------------------------

Глава 2

Anyuta

I was born in the eighties, at the very twilight of the Soviet era, on the Black Sea coast, where my mother had flown from the windy city of Gorky to spend a holiday at a seaside resort while nine months pregnant with me. Sometimes I think that even then, while still inside her, I already adored hotels and stubbornly decided that I wanted to be born precisely into that southern warmth and salty sea air. Just a week after I was born, I took my very first flight — they brought me back to the cold by plane. Perhaps that is why, throughout my entire life, I have been irresistibly drawn to the sun, and why the rest of my destiny became inseparably connected with the sea and with travelling.I was a very frail little girl. At nine months old, I suffered from spasmophilia and seizures, and later they discovered that I had severe farsightedness and strabismus. Because of this, from an early age I was prescribed enormous glasses with thick, heavy frames, and I walked around with one eye patched. Through those lenses my brown eyes looked enormous — literally the size of five-kopeck coins. And yet I was a very sweet, open and friendly child. Whenever one of the adults called, Anyuta? I would happily answer, Whos cuter?Even in those early years, I seemed to have some innate sense of self-worth growing inside me. I remember how, at four, my mother would take me to the opera house where she worked, and I would always fall asleep in the front row because I could not understand a word of what the opera singers were singing. One day, while I was asleep, they carried me out into the foyer and laid me down on a bench. When I woke up in the foyer, I was so outraged that I shouted throughout the entire theatre, They carried me out like some kind of drunk! Even in my four-year-old photograph, I was staring at everyone with an indignant raised eyebrow, as if even then there were already the first signs of that inner disagreement with whatever the world was offering me.My childhood passed in the cramped confines of a Soviet communal apartment, surrounded by endless corridors and an unattractive, suffocating way of life. There were three of us children, and all of us, together with our parents, squeezed into a single eighteen-square-metre room. There was no such thing as personal space. We bathed once a week at the public bathhouse, or right there in a basin on the communal kitchen, under the eyes of our neighbours. Beyond our door, there was often genuine chaos: people drank, shouted and fought, everything was dirty and stank, and on the streets during those harsh late-eighties years there were stories of maniacs, people constantly dying, and terrible crimes being committed.What helped me survive that everyday nightmare was our good, extraordinarily warm and musical family. My parents were performers: my mother was a singer, my father a musician. We were sensitive, finely tuned people thrown into the whirlpool of communal life. Our parents were young back then, working several jobs just to keep things going. They were deeply devoted to the family and took care of us as best they could. We never went hungry because they were incredibly resourceful and always managed to save something for later. And yet even a single piece of candy was always divided honestly into five equal parts — and in this simple way we were taught fairness, kindness and genuine care for one another. But because our parents were constantly working, I was often left to myself. I hardly saw them, and that forced solitude made me independent very early in life.Everything changed when my middle sister, Tanya, was born. From the age of five, I had to become actively involved in raising her, and I was genuinely happy in that role. I poured my whole soul into Tanya. She grew up as my little daughter, and with time she became my best friend. Later our third sister, Ulyasha, was born — a fair-haired angel, an eternally smiling miracle child with whom there was never any trouble. She completed our little world with her light. I adore my sisters, and I cannot imagine what I would have done without them. We were always very close.But the question of housing remained painfully acute. They stubbornly refused to give us an apartment despite our legal status as a large family. Instead of a home, the state sometimes gave us humanitarian aid — those same army ration boxes that had originally been sent for soldiers in Vietnam. We little girls would open the boxes in amazement and discover strange American peanut butter and crackers supposedly containing bromide — a real army tranquilliser. For all those long ten years trapped in that communal apartment, I did nothing but dream desperately, painfully, of the simplest things: having a room of my own and being able to wash myself peacefully in my own private bathroom.Inside me, amid all that oppressive surroundings, there lived a very tender yet stubborn feeling: this could not possibly be how life was supposed to be. This was simply some kind of temporary mistake. I desperately lacked miracles and beauty, and with all my heart I felt that I had been created for something completely different, something greater. It was as if that grey communal apartment were merely a dull backdrop behind which my real life was waiting for me — bright, magical and abundant.Because everything was in such short supply, an innate resourcefulness began awakening in me from childhood. I could play with anything I saw and create something out of whatever happened to be at hand. I enthusiastically made beautiful clothes and dresses for my dolls — even then I was developing that irresistible attraction to everything aesthetic, to beautiful people and beautiful surroundings. Out of ordinary matchboxes I built luxurious multi-room mansions for my dolls, carefully imagining my own large house, that separate bed and private bathroom I dreamed about so passionately.Sometimes reality hurt too much because of my naturally heightened sensitivity. I was born with some kind of hypersensitivity, with an open solar plexus. People with such a delicate inner tuning are often intensely attentive to the outside world, and because of that openness, it can feel as though they receive far more information from the space around them — while at the same time experiencing everything more deeply, because they have so little protection. I literally felt the world through my skin. I caught every hidden sign, had prophetic dreams and could instantly sense other people's unspoken moods. My mother was always kind and tried to create an extraordinary sense of warmth inside our eighteen square metres, but because she was working several jobs, she simply did not have the physical time to delve into the details of my complicated inner universe, my peculiarities and visions. My father's strict discipline, on the other hand, demanded that I become a tough fighter. He saw my delicate vulnerability as childish fussiness that had to be firmly suppressed with loud reprimands so that I would learn to take a blow without whining. My father and I were constantly arguing at the top of our voices, yet I always forgave him for his radiant smile. My mother's positive outlook and my father's remarkable, sparkling sense of humour softened the sharp edges of our life. Thanks to them, the conflicts eventually gave way to warm family evenings when we all gathered together and sang as a family to the guitar or piano.But the moment I stepped beyond the threshold of our room, that familiar little world disappeared, and outside our door there was no one to stand up for me. I went to school as an incredibly open, cheerful and radiant little girl, desperately wanting to make friends. But because of my appearance and enormous glasses, the children invented cruel nicknames for me and began bullying me — and that was how harsh school bullying entered my life. I was the smallest girl in the class, thin, with a funny gap between my teeth. There was no such thing as fashionable clothing in our family, and I was always wearing clothes with patches on the knees. I was talented and desperately wanted to prove myself. I was constantly raising my hand in class, but even this sincere desire seemed only to irritate or amuse those around me. They deliberately ignored me and, just to spite me, denied me any recognition.A burning sense of resentment began growing inside me. All I wanted was something so simple: to have friends, to play together, to laugh together. Instead, everyone laughed at me and at my funny appearance. The realisation that nobody wanted to be friends with me was simply burning me up from the inside.And that was when music came to my rescue. It had been with me since childhood. In fact, I had been singing since I was two, and I began humming my favourite song, And You Know, Everything Will Still Be before I could even speak properly. It carried my faith in a better future. At six, my parents sent me to music school, but everything immediately went wrong because of the teacher. She treated me harshly and unfairly, tied me to a chair and wrote on my fingers with a pen. Even at that age, I could not tolerate being treated that way, so after only one year I firmly told my father that I was never going back. In frustration, he called me lazy, not understanding my pain. But music still refused to leave me. I joined the school choir instead. And that place became my only refuge in the outside world. There, at last, I could unleash the full power of my voice. I became a soloist, and for the first time I felt that I was exactly where I belonged.Romance played a very important role in my childhood. I remember that whenever someone asked me what kind of boy I wanted, I would confidently answer, A curly-haired one. And indeed, from the age of four until I was fourteen, my heart was completely occupied by a devoted, romantic infatuation with a boy named Dima who lived in the very same communal corridor. His only real advantage was his dark curly hair, like the Little Prince's, but he himself was cold as ice — a true Kai. Our families were enemies, and my romantic nature saw in this a cinematic love story: love against all odds. I constantly watched him, followed him around, and eventually he even responded to my persistence. Our first kiss happened behind the sheds. He simply said to me three times, Let's kiss. And we kissed.In that instant, a very real passion flared up inside me. A wild rush of adrenaline literally went to my head. At the very highest peaks of love, exhilarated and happy, I simply could not keep the feeling inside me. I desperately, almost vitally, needed to share it, and I opened up to my only friend. But when I arrived at school, I discovered that she had told the whole class my secret. My classmates greeted me with laughter, while Dima looked at me with icy disapproval for having told someone everything. Overwhelmed by shame, humiliation and rejection, I ran away crying, lost all sense of direction and slammed face-first into the school doorframe. The bump on my forehead became a painful addition to my broken heart and wounded pride. And some time later, that same friend betrayed me completely — she started dating Dima. It was unbearably bitter to realise how someone could simply disregard my feelings, push me aside as if I were an unwanted object. Many years later, a similar story would repeat itself in my life more than once. Apparently, it was a powerful trigger, and this was a trauma I needed to work through.In those moments, books and films became my salvation. That was when my Cinema Magic was born. My consciousness would completely escape into an imaginary world in order to survive reality. From the age of eight, my favourite book was The Wizard of the Emerald City. I completely imagined myself as Ellie, the girl searching for a path to a miracle. Together with her, I escaped far away from the suffocating chaos of our communal corridor. In my child's soul burned a desperate, blind faith that somewhere beyond our communal apartment there was my own Emerald City, and that I was meant to find a way there. The book was not simply a fairy tale for me. It was my personal escape plan into a world where justice triumphs and the most beautiful dreams always come true.Every Sunday I would freeze in front of the television watching the programme Visiting a Fairy Tale. My imagination desperately searched for gateways to magic. I dreamed of a flying carpet, an invisibility cap and the enchanted ring from the cult film Arabella. I believed that all you had to do was turn it around your finger and everything would obediently rearrange itself. I would secretly take my mother's ruby ring, put it on, hold my breath, turn it around and make my most cherished wishes. It inspired me and helped me live.When there was no longer enough room in our tiny room, I escaped into the courtyards and became the leader of the neighbourhood children. I led them through forgotten bomb shelters, abandoned buildings and rubbish huts; I made them hunt for street maniacs and balance at dangerous heights along pipes beside the shit river. Looking back now, I am amazed at the dangerous situations I dragged them into. Yet somehow God always protected me, and nothing terrible ever happened to me. Now I understand that God had always been with me, even though I did not realise it at the time.Seeing all that dangerous street chaos and trying to protect me from it, my mother did everything she could to fill every spare minute of my life with different activities.She enrolled me in swimming. I absolutely hated that icy, freezing water, but it was there, on those swimming lanes, that my frail little body gradually grew stronger and stretched out. They even enrolled me in karate, but my patience lasted only a couple of months. My greatest passion became Latin ballroom dancing, which captivated me with its incredible beauty and elegance. But since our family had no money for beautiful, expensive costumes, I could only attend competitions as a spectator, in that same opera theatre. I would sit in the audience, mesmerised by the beauty, and permanently imprint those vivid images into my mind. We even corresponded in German with a young dancer from Germany, since I was studying German at school.My parents tried to keep me at home by making me do homework and various chores, but more than anything I loved being outside. My thirst for freedom truly unfolded only during our summer trips to the village in the Kostroma region. Those two months helped me come alive again. A wooden house with a stove, my grandmother with her homemade pies, the open space — all of it gave me enormous strength. That was where the director inside me came fully awake. I would gather a group of children, and together we would go hiking, into the forest, ride our bicycles, build huts out of corrugated cardboard and create outdoor theatres for the local grandmothers. I organised a children's Academy of Pan Klyaksa, where we made elixirs from flowers and herbs, drank them and ended up with stomach aches. It was hilarious and fascinating. In the village, it became obvious what a pretty girl I really was, with a heart-shaped face and bow-shaped lips. I was popular with the boys and happy among the other children.But autumn would return, and city life would once again begin to oppress me. Until around the age of twelve, despite all the problems and relationships at school, I still stubbornly tried to be a good girl, please everyone and earn their friendship, hoping that the world would finally love and accept me. I desperately wanted to earn at least a little recognition. But by the time I was about fourteen, things at school only got worse. My mother dressed me in special outfits, hoping to make me stand out from the crowd, but the boys, now turning into rough teenagers, would wait for me, cruelly mock my clothes, sometimes hit me with a wet, dirty rag in front of the blackboard, or deliberately shove me into the mud at the bus stop.The daily battle wore me down completely. I became withdrawn, constantly messy-haired and covered in scraped knees, while my father said that it was my own fault and that I had brought it upon myself with my character. I was hurt by the injustice, and eventually I had simply had enough. My openness developed its final crack, and the first profound inner metamorphoses began. In order to protect my vulnerable soul, I hardened myself. I became easily offended and turned into a true rebel, constantly fighting with teachers, classmates and practically everyone else. Because of this forced, defiant independence, I was quickly labelled a show-off and a fighter for justice, because I stopped staying silent and began telling adults exactly what I thought to their faces. It was in those furious school battles and in my endless confrontation with my father that, despite all the harsh lessons, my own steel backbone was finally forged — along with a fierce discipline and that stubborn refusal to obey rules imposed from the outside.My personal life was no easier. At school dances I would stand alone in a corner while everyone else was asked to dance slow songs, invited to go out, surrounded by cheerful groups, and kissing in corners. No one ever chose me. I was jealous, angry and withdrew even further into myself. I was suffocating from that total loneliness and all my complexes. They even took me to a psychologist, and there I burst into tears, pouring out all the pain I had accumulated as a teenager:Im skinny, ugly and I have no breasts. No one will ever love me!I withdrew into total isolation. I spent hours sitting on the windowsill, watching couples walking together outside, while devouring adult books. I read all of Alexandre Dumas's novels, spellbound by the grandeur of his queens. In The Thorn Birds, Maggie's tragedy — her all-consuming love for an inaccessible man — wounded me to the core. Angelique stirred my sensuality, while Scarlett O'Hara captivated me with her proud character and ability to step over any blow fate could deliver. An enormous revelation came through the heroine of the novel Two Women. Her first frightening yet strangely alluring sensual experience opened up to me the world of dangerous, adult passion. I lived through those intoxicating emotions alongside these women.Sitting on that windowsill, I passionately longed to possess the magnetism of those heroines, to have absolutely everyone fall in love with me, and to meet my noble prince.The paradox was that despite my outward imperfections, a magnetic, captivating woman was already beginning to grow inside me. I could feel it clearly as I devoured those novels. At that time, I was not actually in love with anyone, but through books I was discovering and forming my very idea of how deeply and profoundly I was capable of loving. Those inner images were radically different from the superficial crushes of ordinary teenagers. Something extraordinary was growing inside me: a romantic devotion and an ability to feel everything on some higher level. I was an idealist dreaming of a great, noble and selfless love.But along with that romanticism, another kind of strength was awakening inside me — a premonition of a great, mature sensuality that I did not yet fully understand myself. This emerging femininity was woven from pride, character, a readiness for powerful emotions and a passionate anticipation of the man with whom all of this would finally become possible.At my school graduation, that bud finally began to open.For the first time, my mother put makeup on me and dressed me in her bright jacket. I came without my glasses, my hair loose around my shoulders. A classmate who had spent years hitting me with a wet rag suddenly came over, stared at me with wide eyes and blurted out:You look fucking amazing. Stay like this forever.I did not care about him or his words, but when I came home, I spent a long time staring at my reflection in the mirror. His words did not change me, but they made me stop for the first time and think. I looked closely into the mirror and suddenly, for the first time, noticed signs of real, alluring beauty in myself.In that moment, an unquenchable desire ignited inside me — to prove my strength to the world and to prove that all my childhood dreams of fairy tales, love and miracles were not simply inventions of my imagination.I raised my famous indignant eyebrow and said firmly to my reflection:That's it. I will never again resign myself to my circumstances. I deserve a better life. I will become a magnificent woman, and I will do everything it takes to make all my dreams come true — because I am a magician.