There is something about landing planes that gets Russians clapping with joy. The instant our Aeroflot touched down, all the Russians on board began to clap. It was as though they had been waiting, fingers crossed. In our country, we usually want to clap whenever one of ours takes off on time, especially the national carrier. I got seriously worried about the clapping when, over the Zhukovsky airfield, some fighter planes began to fly upside down right over our heads.
Everybody around me was clapping non-stop. I fervently hoped the pilot of the Aeroflot on the way back would not try any stunt like that but wondered: if he did, would there be clapping?
Here is an oddity from the past, not related, hardly relevant, but here all the same: On October 20, 1986, Aeroflot Flight 6502 ended up upside down on the tarmac at Kurumoch airport after the pilot, on a dare, made an instrument-only landing, ‘blindfolded’ without visual aids and radio help. I am not getting into the details, but suffice to say not many of the 85 or so passengers were in any position to clap. Ever again. Let me just say that when our Aeroflot landed the next time, I too was clapping wildly.
24-hour barbershops
Alexander Pushkin lives on in various forms in the area of Tverskoy Bulvar. There’s the stunningly chandeliered Pushkin Square underground station, the Pushkin theatre and I am sure many other Pushkins. There is also the Café Pushkin, which looks as though it was built a couple of centuries ago, open 24 hours, as I believe are some barbershops. Over borscht, my friend Ivan Parfenov tells me that if I want a haircut of a kind I would not dare to normally, it would be a good idea to visit one after midnight, tanked up on, what else, vodka.
I am told the best time to visit Café Pushkin, where the waiters walk around painfully formally, is during what the waiters call The Werewolf Shift. Friday night/ Saturday morning or Saturday night/ Sunday morning, around 4:00 a.m. That’s when they arrive, the werewolves, hungry and looking for a change of scene from partying all night, really, really drunk. The waiters swear they see the same customers during non-witching hours as well, but they look and act very different. They don’t really complain though. It’s good for business. And no, Pushkin never set foot in this restaurant, he died too early for that.
Paying tribute
Near the Kremlin, by a bridge, a man is keeping vigil over flowers and photographs of Boris Nemtsov, one of the many fierce critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He took seven bullets one evening in February 2015, and now his photograph stares dully at passing tourists. It is better to be in the Russian opposition only if you are not in Russia. You can poke fun but only up to a point.
Ivan, my friend, used to produce a rap music news channel, where he had two rappers, DINO MC47 and ST, come and rap politicians with songs set to news. ST had never read a paper or followed politics before. The programme came on every Friday, from the middle of 2011 to the end of 2013, a brief flowering. The show was such a hit that Ivan and his crew were invited to present the annual television awards, TEFI. They conceived a show about how Russian television and its entertainment programmes were degrading the mind of the young. As Ivan put it, “It was like pouring noodle soup into our ears.”
TEFI liked the take so much they said they would pay not to have the programme performed during the awards show. It was an offer Ivan couldn’t refuse. They took the money and released it later on their own channel to thousands of page views. The highpoint came when the then Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, was invited into the studio for a preview. He was laughing and joking for a while, saying, “I am a rock-and-roll kind of guy but maybe I should try rap in Parliament and they will listen to me!”
Medvedev’s demeanour changed when he saw his image come up in the rap news, linked to the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, another political dissenter. Since we are running out of space here, let me simply say that the programme did not run for much longer. And yes, Khodorkovsky no longer lives in Russia.