2 The Proposed Meeting

Her maternal relatives, one after another, left from Ukraine and started to do the rounds of her house in Moscow. She understood that these steps were being taken by them to take her back into their fold. How can you make a 24 years old accept you as a relative when you have cut off all ties from her since birth?

"My God! Look at these guy?" They cannot take no for an answer." She thought.

"The drive way had become dented with all their comings and goings." These were her thoughts.

Her paternal relatives had also started showing interest, and she was being contacted through the Indian embassy in Moscow. Why were her relatives from both sides so concerned about her after so many years?

"Not to be left behind, my father's parents have started contacting me through the embassy," she started to ponder. "How do I tell the embassy people to back off." This was her next question to herself.

Ultimately, her relatives from both sides combined forces and started to pressurize her to either go to India to her father's relatives or go to Ukraine to her mother's relatives. She was not to live alone as being pretty, young and alone in the world, she would be a target for bad men, meaning wolves in sheep clothing. To tell you the truth it was to scare her.

Given a choice, Tania would prefer to go to both sides respectively, for some time. She would also prefer to retain her freedom. But, she understood that they both had a point. A young pretty girl living on her own in a big city that too in a huge house in a way meant an invitation to the buglers and swindlers. Life would become problematic for her. She could be swindled out of her property, fall into bad company or something bad could happen to her while she was going to the university or on the way back.

Furthermore, being alone had disadvantages. After her parents' death, the house had become too quiet for her. She used to keep jumping at any sound made by the contraction or expansion of the woodwork. She would think of them being ghosts or something to that effect. Her sleep had been drastically affected. She would sometimes imagine thieves breaking into her house. Such worries kept her awake and soon she developed dark circles below her lower eyelids. In order to camouflage these dark circles, she had to apply a great deal of makeup.

The house was indeed huge. It was a double story house in a good neighborhood. It was the only real investment that her parents had made. They had, of course, put aside some savings and fixed deposits for a rainy day which meant her education, marriage and any eventuality that would come.

She was sitting at home in the evening that day with these thoughts moving randomly through her mind. The month of March had arrived and her paternal grandparents were expected in May. At present, it was cold in Dharamshala which experienced all the seasons of Spring, Summer, Monsoon, Autumn and Winter. Spring was in the air but it was still cold, and they would prefer to travel as soon as the weather became pleasant.

However, in Moscow, the weather in March is freezing with temperatures of -4° and 3° degrees and 15 days of rains also occur. However, April is the commencement of spring in Moscow and it is the 6th warmest month of the year. The maximum daytime temperature is around 10°C while at night the temperature goes to be 2°C. The month of May in Moscow and is the 4th warmest month of the year. Daytime maximum temperatures are around 19°C, whilst at night the temperature goes down to 8°C. Her paternal grandparents would be coming in May as it would be alright for them to come when it is warmer here.

Then one day, she got a call from my paternal grandfather. He spoke at length to her and said it was her wish to live in whichever city or country she wanted to live in. He just wanted her to visit her father's home and meet everyone. Similarly, he wanted her to visit her mother's home and visit everyone there too. If children can make mistakes even parents can make mistakes. No one is perfect.

After hearing him, she understood what he meant. She started to feel respectful towards both sides of her parents' families. He was right there. Her parents and their parents should have resolved their differences. They had left this world but had passed on the guilt factor to her grandparents and now it was for her, Tania, to resolve this issue.

She finally decided to call a representative from both sides of her grandparents i.e. maternal and paternal, to come to her home within a few months to discuss matters. Since it would take time for her paternal grandparents to come, she called the Indian embassy to help out. The embassy sent one of their persons to personally visit her and collect details from her pertaining to her father.

She felt that her paternal grandparents were some known persons otherwise the details would have been available with the embassy people too as they had been trying to contact her as per my paternal grandparents' request.

She was informed that there were official formalities and it would take at least two to three months for them to come over. This delay in their coming to Moscow would give her ample time to submit her thesis which was almost at the final stage of completion.

It is said that time passes slowly especially when you have lost some close relatives. In her case, the first 2 months, after the death of her parents, had moved very slowly but thereafter, the next two-month picked up speed. Maybe she felt so because she had picked up her normal routine of going to the University, meeting the professors, discussing with them about the thesis and finally submitting it. Soon she would get her desired PhD and with it the designation of a Professor.

Time was moving fast now and the 2 months waiting period for Tania's relatives passed in a jiffy. Before she knew it, March had arrived. She had earlier sent out messages to her maternal and paternal relatives to come and meet me or at least send one relative from each side to discuss things with her. Her maternal grandparent was ready to send someone within a month but in case of her paternal relatives, it would take time as they would be coming from another country and that too from another town in that country.

They would need a visa and book a flight to Moscow from New Delhi, the capital of India. They hailed from Dharmshala, a small town in the mountain state of Himachal Pradesh which had become famous as a tourist attraction due to the presence of the Dalai Lama who had fled Tibet in 1959 and sought asylum in India. The Indian Government at that time had allocated upper Dharmshala called Maclord Gang area for him and his followers to settled down. After the Dalai Lama got the noble prize for peace in 1989 and since then many foreigners have been visiting Dharmshala regularly to meet him. They also come as tourists and some come to get treatment in the Tibetan system of healing.

Both her paternal grandparents were alive. Her father had been their only child and had grown up as a stubborn child and a stubborn adult. It seemed that the grandparents were equally stubborn. Even after Tania was born no one took the initiative to break the wall of no communication. It is said that when a child is born in the family, all differences are resolved. However, this did not happen in their families from both sides.