Love affair with Tanya is very touching…! knowing fully well that their parents won’t agree for their marriage as there was this discrimination between the intellectual and non-intellectual classes. The protagonist and Tanya decide to run away from their houses, they reach a comfortably safe place behind the petrol pump, but it starts raining and they feel hungry and cold, so they decide to return to their respective houses and meet after thirteen years when they become 18 years old and marry…

The last chapter of this section is quite sentimental when Seryog dreams of August and the old time when there used to live a shepherd nearby (His grandmother had narrated stories about the olden days…)

Thus, we note that the child lives in a much closed, protective world. Almost no interaction with anybody but towards the end his emotional world is getting richer.

Now, coming to the second part which is titled as “The Indian Films” Here the narrator tells about himself, his cousin brother Vladik, his grandmother Tonya and great grandmother Natasha. Special mention deserves grandfather Partos (Motya) and some neighbors.

This part narrates the life of the protagonist in Smolensk. For the child, this is the Golden period of his life. Close proximity only with his cousin and details about Indian Films; how he came to see the first Indian film and how it left a lasting impression on the heart and mind of the protagonist. Only in the Conclusion the readers come to know about his life in Moscow, which too, he realizes, he loves and without these fantastic neighbors his existence is incomplete.

Let us see the chapter “India – 2 parts” in this section.

But before proceeding ahead, it would be nice to see what the author personally thinks about India and Indian films and why they have left a lasting impression on his mind. In a personal communication he writes:

I am very glad that you have translated my book into Hindi. (Marathi version too is translated simultaneously – both are yet to be published – ACR) .

“What is India for me – it is also difficult to explain. Somehow I feel that it is my SECOND MOTHERLAND, and though, except the films, I don’t know anything and haven’t seen anything related to India, but somehow I know that people in your country are very kind and friendly.