But the sun had now just set and the evening hue was fast disappearing. We moved from the Iran border towards the busier part of the city. Usain wanted me to meet his Khal and aunt; he wanted to introduce me to the Arabzade Family. A husband and wife living in a modest traditional Lanka-ran home. They were sweet people and very loving indeed; the husband must be seventy-five and the wife close to seventy herself. I was introduced to them, and they instantly took a liking to me. ‘I’m Hind, from Hindi. I love movies, I love Rajendra Kumar and Raj Kapoor,’ the aunt told me excitedly.
The husband was a professor at the local university, and the wife was also a teacher. They were the intellectual elites of this small yet ancient city. It was as if they had been living here for eternity. The house was full of books and encyclopedias, volumes of them. They were teachers after all, and the entire family read books. But what surprised me the most was that they had a Russian volume of Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Geetanjali,’ a selection of the master’s works all printed in a thick Russian book. I was amazed and soon started reading the book, which must be more than seventy years old. I grabbed that copy and begged them that I would want to take it back with me. The Arabzades were very happy and gifted me the book, not before signing it.
Usain’s aunt was a generous lady and gave me cakes, chai, and pistachios to eat, which I had with relish and enjoyed three cups of hot tea. I also gave them a hundred rupee note as a gift and token from me to them to remind them of my visit.
The wife sang old songs with me; she was a great admirer of Rajendra Kumar and the film Sangam, and she kept talking about it. I was really honored by the couple; we spoke about religion, the swastika, Stalin, and the Armenian war, all the while I enjoyed cakes and halwa with them.
They loved India and knew a lot about the Vedas and even The Bhagavad Gita. The husband also had a Rig Veda in his book collection and even showed me a hundred-year-old Bible written in Turkish, printed in New Delhi. I was thrilled to see how much they knew about India and how they loved the old Bollywood films. To me, they looked like people trapped in ancient times, still in the past century. It’s as if they had frozen in time. But really, we all live in our own worlds, and theirs was an old ancient world spent glorifying old Hindi films. They spoke on various topics about Zoroastrian culture, about Gandhi, and the India-Pakistan conflict. Even though they did not understand English well, Usain would translate my words to them; he acted as the interpreter and my true guide and would often use the Google Translator application to explain to me what this fascinating Lanka-ran family was saying. That way, we were all able to understand each other even though we did not know each other’s language. I had to snap myself with the copy of the Rabindranath Tagore book, and I did just that. It was a memory I wanted to keep, and thus, the snap was important to me.
The day had been long, and I said my goodbyes to the family. The Arabzades kissed me on the cheek, and I bent and touched the old professor’s feet, telling him that is how we respect and say goodbye to our elders in India, giving them some more insights into Indian culture.
The rest of the night was spent with Usain and his friend Rasim as we went to another Turkish friend’s house for milk masala tea with cakes and halwa. The most amazing thing was the pet dog that the Turkish friend had; it was so small and tiny, a white puppy dog that looked like a mid-sized sheep.
A fabulous day like this had to have an explosive ending, and it really did. As I arrived back to my title in the dead of night, I was greeted at the entrance by a clown, a Russian circus clown dressed all in red with makeup and wings. Its name was Purtush, yes, Purtush the clown greeted me with many of his funny poses. I took a video with him prancing around and then decided to play the fool with him. We opposed together, and I told Purtush that he looked like the scary killer clown from the Stephen King horror novel ‘IT.’ He seemed to agree, but by now, we had a great laugh and fun together clowning around the hills of Lanka-ran. This was the perfect end to a long and eventful day in Azerbaijan. I really did clown my way to the end of the evening; this is turning out to be a very eventful and exciting travel for me.”