Russia did not open itself easily.
It arrived like winter—slow, inevitable, unapologetic. The sky hung low and pale, and the land stretched outward without asking permission to end. Distance here was not measured in kilometers, but in patience.
In Moscow, history pressed close. Walls remembered revolutions. Streets carried echoes of marches, speeches, silence. Grandeur stood beside austerity, gold domes rising above concrete blocks, faith and force sharing the same horizon.
People moved with restraint. Smiles were rare, not absent—guarded, earned. Parampal sensed it quickly: warmth here was not given freely, but when it arrived, it meant something.
On the metro, chandeliers glowed beneath the earth. Stations looked like palaces, built not to comfort the rich, but to remind the ordinary of dignity. Beauty here was defiant. Even underground, it refused to disappear.
He traveled onward, beyond the city, where birch forests thinned into open land. Villages stood quiet, wooden houses weathered but upright. Life here had learned how to survive first, dream later.
An old woman sold bread and tea near a frozen roadside. Her hands were rough, her movements steady. She spoke little, but when she nodded, it felt like approval earned through endurance rather than conversation.
Russia did not teach hope the way warm places did.It taught persistence.
That strength could be silent.That suffering did not need an audience.That survival itself could be a form of pride.
One evening, snow began to fall—soft at first, then relentless. The world blurred, edges softened, sound disappeared. In that quiet, Parampal felt something unexpected: calm.
When everything is stripped away—color, noise, comfort—what remains is truth.
Russia asked a single question and waited for an honest answer:
Can you endure without becoming bitter?
Before leaving, he wrote:
Some places teach you how to grow.Some teach you how to heal.Russia teaches you how to endure—without losing yourself.
The train pulled forward, carving a line through white emptiness.
The journey continued—colder now, heavier, and unbroken.