One day, Richard Gere said: “People, you can’t hide from your poison. It exists, and it will find you, so, as my friend’s mother said: ‘If I knew that my life would end this way, I would live it to the fullest, enjoying everything I was told not to do!’ None of us get out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself as something secondary. Eat delicious food. Walk in the sun. Jump into the ocean. Share the precious truth that is in your heart. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There is simply no time for the rest.”
Every person has one life. And everyone lives it in their own way. Someone lives up to a plan, and someone lives a silly, strange, but interesting life, by his own code.
We never know what fate is preparing for us. This expression has acquired a new meaning for me when one day, unexpectedly for myself, I entered into a correspondence with a stranger from India, whom I later married.
Before the acquaintance with my future Indian husband, I was not interested in India, but since childhood, I have been a fan of the work of the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. My parents loved to read books. Almost all the cabinets in the house were crammed with books by various writers. We had the several works of Tagore. As this great Indian poet, I loved to buy bouquets of fresh flowers and put them on the table, then to drink coffee in a beautiful setting from good service and on a beautiful tablecloth. It made my life happier. As Rabindranath Tagore used to say: “Of course, I could live without flowers, but they help me maintain respect for myself because they prove that I am not constrained by everyday concerns. They are evidence of my freedom.”
* * *
Before India I worked for an international human rights organization.
I loved my comfortable life and my interesting job. Every day I went to a colony or prison and worked with convicts. From there I went to my office and studied the appeals of convicts, making for them appeals, petitions, and complaints.
In the mornings, pensioners, women usually came to me with their disabled children, to whom I gave my company car so that it was easier for them to go to hospitals. I sought for them free examinations and treatment in good clinics.
One day a woman came to me with her child. She asked me to help her with the examination and treatment for the child. I paged thresholds of various instances and institutions, bored with letters to health officials. In the end, we managed to send her and her child for free examination and treatment abroad. I subsequently had a lot of such cases, and for everyone, I tried my best, regardless of their nationality or religion.
American employees regularly visited our office to check our activities, because our organization was sponsored from the US budget.
One day, when I was sitting in my office in the winter, my boss approached me and said that one recidivist in prison required a meeting with me. The next day I went to the city prison.
I usually went to correctional colonies, where the persons sentenced were serving their sentences. This time I had to go to the prison, where there were persons for whom they had not yet been sentenced, or who were waiting to be sent to a colony. Everything here breathed uncertainty, gloomy and hopeless longing. Prisoners dressed in black robes, behind the fence of the checkpoint, inside the prison yard, did their fatigue duties. There was a grim longing for freedom in the air. I passed a checkpoint, then a yard, another checkpoint, another yard and entered the prison building.
It was damp and smelled like mold.
I was asked to go to the prison warden’s office.
A gray-haired man with a stern face and clear eyes sat in the office.
– The person who wants to see you is an old recidivist, a wolf who brought a lot of grief to people. Why are you defending him?
– I do not defend him, but his rights. If his rights have been violated, then we must correct the error.
They provided me with two security guards with the Kalashnikov gun, and we went to the recidivist. A Russian grandfather of about 60 years old was sitting on a chair, his face was arrogant, his faded eyes were sly, and his hands resembled sled-hammers.
– Hello. You said that you wanted to meet with me to discuss your criminal case; – I said and then called my name and surname.
– Surely you are not the Jana, are you? – The recidivist laughed. – You are very popular here. Our guys in prison told me so much about you that you helped a lot to many people, I thought that there such an adult wolf would come, but you look like a kind angel.
– I can leave if you no longer need my help, – I said, shrugging my shoulders.
– No, let me tell you what kind of help I need.
– Tell me what you need.
The grandfather talked for two hours, I wrote down for him, asked questions, then he said:
– Girl, I don’t know why, but I believe you. I think you really will help me. I am an old man who reads people like books. You are a pure soul.
I asked him to show me all the documents of his case.
