When I returned to Russia in the beginning of this year I was enraptured to find positive tendencies in this country. People become more confident in future, they have begun showing interest in different areas, a sort of eccentricity have resurfaced - the natural thing for all countries where people live decently. In October I gave an interview to a local newspaper for young journalist was very insistent. To my surprise she had given my home number to few readers, including one man (middle aged clerk I suppose) whose hobby is assembling velorickshaws. He urgently asked me to send the Indian one to him, for his creations fall apart when tested and the Chinese, the antique one I think, he brought all the way from China, did not survive either.
Actually I am not fond of giving interviews, for privacy reasons and laxity of today's scribes (they always run against time). I suggest reading my books first, then I can provide thousand words; journalists have no time for digesting my works, they are more interested in thousand words quickly if possible and preferably some oddities they could exaggerate. Last year I found in another newspaper that one day I was thrown into Indian jail. Imagine Black Hole of Calcutta. In fact I was talking about my encounter with semi-naked cops guarding a secret object in the centre of Patna, the capital of poverty-striken Bihar, eastern Indian state. Policemen' (it was early morning and some of them were only in underpants) assignment was to keep ignorant foreigners from making pictures of memorial to Bihari soldiers who died in numerous wars with Pakistan. At first I thought I was assaulted by bandits-dacoits, then I realized who they were but unfortunately neither they nor me could not understand each other and only after large crowd had gathered with volunteers-translators my film with wrong snap was confiscated.  
My interviewers neither recorded my revelations nor offered to sign releases and lately I asked them to show the text of article before publication so I could correct it. The last interviewer managed this by mobile at the same time covering visit of Mr Veshnyakov (the chief of Izbirkom, the Russian electoral body). The dialogue was as follows. I: "Remove this thing about birds". Journalist: "Don't you want to tell abourd birds at all?". I: "No, I do". Journalist: "You've said in India there are many birds". I: "Yes, but you included this phrase after passage about multiplicity of India, its languages, customs, etc. People think of a man by what he says and how he organizes his thoughts. I do not like to seem inconsistent. If you remember I talked about migrating birds in context of character of Indians, that hunting is not common for them, even movie stars like Saif Ali Khan and Salman Khan were persecuted for poaching, but you did not mention it". Journalist: "Mea culpa, what else". I: "Delete the statement that I am studying Tibetan". Journalist: "But you are". I: "Yes, I am, however you write about it after few reflections on difficulties with pronunciation of Hindi words, then comes this statement, it sounds like I'm boasting". And so on. Fortunately the article was only a page and apparently conversation did not distract her from Mr Veshnyakov's ideas she carefully conveyed on another page.
I have been distracted from my work by external events throughout the year but I have little to remember. Local, all-Russian or whole-world events are good to know but what we keep in memory is different. In January 2006 I was in Kerala, the southernmost Indian state, and we, group of assorted tourists in jeep, were passing beautiful scene near Quilon: the setting sun was illuminating the fields shaded by coconut palms with few peasants furrowing their shares, and I exclaimed involuntarily: "Such a pity we cannot stop right here to make a picture!". My neighbour in jeep, a beautiful Italian woman, said: "But you can keep it in your mind". I keep. I try to keep.