Subhash Jaireth

For example, Tolstoy was a big fan of Dickens and Dostoevsky was a big fan of Dickens.

So I even read Dickens in Russian translation.

Slightly.

When I was 18 years old, I got a scholarship to go to Moscow to study geology.

Yeah, when I was 18.

And that was many, many years ago.

I studied geology there.

And what is good about the Russian or Soviet education system was that though I was a student geology of the engineering faculty at the time, it was compulsory to do units in literature,

in philosophy and political economy.

So I had a good exposure of the humanities then and that from there I picked the love for literature, which was always with me because I started writing short stories when I was eight or nine years old.

So I loved that training in Russian literature and language, which went alongside my science subjects.

I'm very thankful for that sort of total education.

Oh, absolutely, in Russian.

And actually, we were not allowed to speak English in the class when we were learning Russian.

And all the communication was in Russian.

And everything we read was in Russian.

In fact, before I went to Moscow in 1969, I had read Dr. Zhivago in English translation.

And the first book which I read in Russian was Dr. Zhivago in Russian when I landed up there, just to see what was the difference.

Oh, yes, yes.

Oh, that book meant a lot because when I was reading Dr. Zhivago in English in a small town in Punjab as a school, studying in high school, I used to wonder the changes in the weather described by Pastor Naik so nicely in the book, Winter and the Autumn.