Maslenitsa: Dasvidaniya Winter

          Bruce Lee once said, “Be like water”. I think he formulated this profound aphorism while practising to walk during a cold winter. The water that falls from the sky does not always reach the earth as water. It lives a life as it passes through the different layers of our atmosphere, reaching us as rain, sleet or snow. 

Water is one of the most formidable of opponents. It is least distracted and lies still. It changes and moulds itself into various shapes and forms. If you drop a small stone into a puddle, the puddle graciously accepts it by folding itself into ripples. But if you were to step strong on it, it will respond by splashing itself on you. 

Water takes on a new paradigm during winter. There is the pure, immaculate snow, untouched and chaste. It will respond kindly to gentle hands and oblige to become a snowman or a palace. But to a audacious foot that steps on it, the snow exposes its effective weapons, in the form of a sheet of glassy ice. As you confidently stride crushing lively snowflakes of yesterday under your heavy boots, the spirit waits lurking, right under the deceptively solid layer of snow that absorbs your feet submissively. Right about the moment when your confidence gets the better of your judgement, the ice reveals itself pulling the foot you just moved. You frantically try to use the other foot to regain your balance, but the ice has more hands to pull your legs. In a frantic moment compressed into microseconds, your movements resemble a talented dancer, before you fall, along with your pride. If you were lucky enough, the fall would be borne by your gluteus muscles (Colloquially referred to as the “butt”) cushioned well by adipose tissue.

The long prologue aside (what did you think, I fell? Of course not.), the point of this post is not about the deceptive properties of ice. The ice and its deception is a part of the long winter Russia faces. But when that winter ends, (at least in the calendar) Russians celebrate it with a blast, almost literally. The celebrations have a long history in the Pagan tradition of Russia and predate Christianity, although now the dates coincide with the last week before the Great Lent.

Maslenitsa, or Carnival as it translates, is a festival to mark the end of winter. Winter is personified as a huge straw man and is placed at the center of the celebration grounds. The crowd forms a circle and goes around the statue, chanting verses that command winter to go away. The circle spirals inward as people move faster and closer and gets to the foot of the straw man. There is a loud chorus shouting that would melt the snow if it had ears. After that, the straw man is set on fire, while the crowd gleefully celebrates the end of the cold, depressing winter.

This is what Wikipedia has to say on Maslenitsa.

“The mascot of the celebration is usually a brightly dressed straw effigy of Maslenitsa, formerly known as Kostroma. As the culmination of the celebration, on Sunday evening, Lady Maslenitsa is stripped of her finery and put to the flames of a bonfire. Any remaining blintzes are also thrown on the fire and Lady Maslenitsa's ashes are buried in the snow (to "fertilize the crops").”

As a cultural outsider, whose city welcomes 20 degrees centigrade with bright sweaters, I found the idea of Maslenitsa very interesting. Being in Moscow, I did not want to lose this opportunity. So, I googled and found out about one of the biggest Maslenitsa gatherings in Moscow (I found out later that it was “around” Moscow). In fact, it was a camping ground outside the city, the exact location of which was known to regular campers and hikers. I decided to “hike” with a group, after all, what could go wrong, right? Maybe they will walk a kilometre or two, and get to the camping site. I later found out that the hike was to be around 15km long and would start at 8 in the morning. Now, this was a shock. But hey, your brave friend does not go back on his decision. So, I went. In the freezing morning hours of a Sunday morning, when the Sun is still asleep, I went to the meeting point and joined the group.

It is a request from the group that the exact location of the grounds remain a secret, so I shall not tell you which train I took and which station I got down at. After travelling for a while, we got down at a station, tightened our backpacks, and started to walk. We walked, and walked. Peter Jackson’s greatest success is not the number of Oscars his movies got, but rather the fact that every time you hike or trek, you see yourself in a scene from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We walked through a forest, where some trees still maintained their greenery through the winter and were eagerly looking forward to spring. We crushed snow under our boots and skated through the ice (without slipping, of course).

After about an hour of brisk walk, at which stage I estimated that we had crossed about 10km (I later found out that we had done less than 7), we took a break by a glade that was downstream from a small dam. We shared the food and drinks we had brought. I was convinced by intense persuasion from my fellow hikers to take an amiably colored drink, which they said was made of honey with very little alcohol content. It tasted divine, almost like a strongly made tea sweetened with honey. 

We continued our walk and crossed the dam, where I found this charming chap. He seemed to say, “When the water flows, it flows. But when it freezes, I put a stool there and ponder over life”.

After we crossed the dam, we stumbled upon a monument to the villagers from the village who had given up their lives for the motherland in the Second World War. 

At this point, the hike leader told us that we were running late and may not be able to reach the grounds at noon, as planned. We labored on, trudging through the snow, cutting across the curved path to form straighter, shorter paths. Finally, we reached the venue a little after noon. The events were about to begin.

  

All around me I saw people dressed in vibrant colors. Oranges and yellows and greens flowed through the place as though spring was already there. But I had no time to look around and admire. A girl who had apparently time-traveled from the 13^th century, tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to join the crowd gathered at the bear den, where she and the others would wake up the sleeping bear.

Normally the mention of the word bear, sleeping or otherwise, would have sent me running, but I was err...cough cough, encouraged to go to the cave.

I lent my voice to the chorus that sang songs to wake up the bear. While I didn’t get much of the Russian song, I surreptitiously inserted random verses from the Rig Veda to fit the tune. It worked and the bear got up from his lumber. And spring was here. But winter was still around. We had to chase her away. With fire.

Fire, to a culture that survives -20 degrees, is as valuable as oxygen. It gives both heat and light, the two things that life needs, yet is deprived of in the winter. When the sun betrays the Russians by handing them over to the cruel clutches of winter, a fire is like carrying your own private, more loyal sun in your hearth.

So when the day comes to say goodbye to the winter, the Russians do not wait for the sun to appear and assist them in the process. They channel the heat of their resilient spirit and set winter on fire. The straw man burned and fell apart one limb at a time.

There was a loud cheer from the crowd as each part fell. The crowd went berserk when the head fell. It was quite a delight to watch the joy on their faces, even in an era of artificial heating in homes and cars. But the fun wasn’t over yet. There were enough games, music and dance to keep everyone happy. There was tug of war, which I took part in. 

There was a 15 foot tall castle whose walls were made of ice. Scaling this castle while people threw snowballs at you was the game. I succeeded at this with some help from the people who were already on top. There were slides and gigantic swings for the kids to play.

There was the mother of all ice bucket challenges, where players stripped to their underwear (temperatures, even after burning winter, were sub-zero) and tried to climb a 30-foot tall pole. As far as I saw, none succeeded. The main reason was that after a while your hands freeze and you cannot grip the pole anymore.

 

There were other ice sculptures such as this one, which provided ample opport -unity for pictures.  

There was also a makeshift setup for making pancakes(called bliny) which are as much a part of Maslenitsa as the fire is. Round and yellow, the pancake symbolises the sun, but the symbolism was lost to my digestive system which gobbled them up by the dozen.

 And so, with that the festival came to an end for most people. There was a train to Moscow arriving at the platform in twenty minutes and the crowd hastened towards the station which was 2 km away. I joined the crowd and realised that I would not be able to make it at that pace. With a flurry of mumbled Izvinites (Excuse me) and Spasibas (thank you), I rushed towards the station and got to within 5 minutes to find a platform as crowded as the grounds had been. I asked my fellow walker where the ticket counter was and the fellow nonchalantly told me that it was without charge. Was this a festival concession, the Russian government offered? I did not know. But by this time, the train arrived and we all got into it. I spoke to a couple of co-passengers and discovered to my horror that the Russian government was not a charity organisation. But then, they were considerate enough to have a ticket counter at the exit, so those innocent, wayward souls like me could buy the ticket.

As I dragged my tired feet back home, I was filled with images of joy and laughter from the Festival. Winter may not have left us yet, but spring has definitely arrived.