Mother Russia

Just a couple of days before we landed at the Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, there had been a major drone attack by Ukraine in the Russian capital.

- Chinki Sinha

It was, of course, thwarted. Like everything else here. Resistance, etc.

The world order is changing. Europe is arming itself. China says they are prepared for all wars. America is not so harsh on Russia anymore. Ceasefires are meaningless. Wartime is eternal.

Outside the airport, a huge billboard flashed, 'Welcome to the City of Pushkin', and then advertisements followed.

The Tsars are long gone. But the oligarchs are here. There’s luxury and materialism. A Russian guide talked about the boxes in which Russian aristocracy would sit in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. She then showed us where President Vladimir Putin sits.

“Take as many photos as you want,” she said.

That evening, Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre was to be performed.

“It is a story about a conflict between the king of gods and his mortal son,” the guide said. “The opera is luxury. Take more photos.”

The Iron Curtain’s gone, too. We are all the same people at the end of the day. We are all looking for stories of kings and queens and grandeur to compete against the other. The simple peasant girl immortalised in the wooden stacking dolls called Matryoshka dolls that were originally painted to look like a traditional Russian woman or ‘babushka’ wearing a sarafan-designed first in 1890—are now souvenirs. Motherland, they say.