The Indian Diaspora In Russia

I grew up reading the Soviet Union and Sputnik magazines, Russian folk tales in English, watching my father learn Russian with Linguaphone Institute records, on the old gramaphone. (I grew up at a time when the Sovient Union was big). From there on the transition to Chekhov, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, the poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Anna Akhmatova, and later on the movies of Tarkovsky ('The Stalker' still remains my all-time favorite movie), Tchaikovsky's ballet 'The Nutcracker'etc was but a natural progression.

An old article, but interesting  - from PetersbergCity.com:

"...there is a significant Indian and South Asian diasporic presence in Russia. A recent study sponsored by the Russian Academy of Sciences claims that Russia may indeed be witnessing the re-emergence of that once extensive Indian Diaspora that stretched from Sindh through Central Asia and into Russia."

The Indian Diaspora In Russia

http://petersburgcity.com/news/city/2004/11/23/indian_diaspora/

Debt and Religion

"In today's excerpt - in ancient times, taking out loans for land or dowries was often necessary for people to eat or have families, but not repaying those loans could bring the risk of their children or themselves being sold into slavery. All of the world's great religions emerged amid the anguish of this burden of debt and debates about the role of the market in life. The language of these religions is permeated with the language of debt - with words such as redemption being borrowed directly from debt transactions:

"Even the very earliest Vedic poems, composed sometime between 1500 and 1200 BC, evince a constant concern with debt - which is treated as synonymous with guilt and sin. ... In all Indo-European languages (such as English and French), words for 'debt' are synony­mous with those for 'sin' or 'guilt', illustrating the links be­tween religion, payment and the mediation of the sacred and profane realms by 'money.' For example, there is a connection between money (German Geld), indemnity or sacrifice (Old English Geild), tax (Gothic Gild) and, of course, guilt. ...

"Why ... do we refer to Christ as the 'redeemer'? The primary meaning of 'redemption' is to buy something back, or to recover something that had been given up in security for a loan; to ac­quire something by paying off a debt. It is rather striking to think that the very core of the Christian message, salvation itself, the sacrifice of God's own son to rescue humanity from eternal damnation, should be framed in the language of a financial transaction. ... "

Read the rest here.

From 'Debt: The First 5,000 Years', by David Graeber

The Historian of the Hunted

"There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It's not one man's job. It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail — the bravery, even, of the lions."

Chinua Achebe, Nigerian writer, author of 'Things Fall Apart'

Sukkot, A Celebration

Never knew about this. How beautiful, to keep alive the memory of a journey, this way.

Sukkot, or Feast of Tabernacles, is a Biblical holiday celebrated in late September to late October. The holiday lasts seven days. The Sukkah is a walled structure covered with plant material - built for the celebration - and is intended to be a reminiscence of the type of dwelling in which the Israelites stayed during their 40 years of travel in the desert after the exodus from slavery in Egypt.

Throughout the holiday, meals are eaten inside the Sukkah and many sleep there as well. On each day of the holiday, members of the household recite a blessing over the lulav and etrog (four species). The four species include the lulav (a ripe green, closed frond from a date palm tree), the hadass (boughs with leaves from the myrtle tree), the aravah (branches with leaves from the willow tree) and the etrog (the fruit of a citron tree.) -- Paula Nelson (29 photos total)


http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/10/sukkot_a_celebration.html