As she could not find these books online in PDF or e-book format, she revisited the book stores and started combing all the bookshelves to find his books. She found all seven of them, bought them and headed home to read them.
Meanwhile at the Gagarins Home in Ukraine.
Nikita was Svetlana's mother, in other words, Tania's grandmother. She lived in Khayenky, a small village near Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Khayenky was about 2 hours drive from Kyiv.
Nikita had come here as a bride many years ago. Her husband, Fedor (meaning powerful ruler of the people) was the owner of a huge farm. They had two daughters and a son. The eldest daughter was Svetlana (meaning shining woman), the second younger one was Galina (women of serenity) and then the youngest child was a son the family named him Igor (Meaning a farmer). She did not know what her own name meant but it was a nice name that her parents had given her. Her husband had made a name for himself and soon became the head of the village level organisation that looked to the development of the village. He expired last year and her son, Igor, was elected to carry on his father's work.
Svetlana had informed Nikita about the Indian student who was her senior and was studying medicine. She was aware of the fact that Svetlana had fallen in love with her senior and wanted to marry him. Svetlana had brought the Indian boy, Mahesh Sharma, to meet the family. Thought she was in support of her daughter, her husband and her in-laws were not happy about their family member marrying an outsider, that too of another religion, another country, another language etc.
When Svetlana did not listen to the advice of the elders in her family, and went ahead and married the Indian doctor, they all cut off ties with their child. However, Nikita kept in touch with Svetlana through her friend in Moscow and got to know how her daughter's family was progressing. She would get to see how well Tania was doing in school, college and in the university. After all, it is said,' 'blood is thicker than water'.
After the demise of her daughter and son-in-law, she convinced her son Igor and his wife to bring her granddaughter home. Her granddaughter was Igor's niece and was not to live alone in this big world. Her maternal family members were still alive. She may have lost her parents, but she had a family.
Hence, it was decided to visit Tania in Moscow and try to convince her to come to Khayenky, to settle here. This could not be done by letters or over the phone. Accordingly, she had sent her husband's cousins and their children one by one to meet Tania and convince her to come back to her mother's family.
She found out that the parents of Svetlana's husband, 'Mahesh Sharma', were trying to take Tania into their family fold like she was trying to bring Tania under the protection of her family. This information had been passed on to her by her friend in Moscow. Luckily, she had got hold of the phone number and address of Mahesh's father from her daughter a couple of years ago through her friend.
Hoping that Mahesh's father had not changed their phone number, she decided to contact him. After checking the convenient time to call as per the time zones in the two countries, she dialed the international number.
Tania's grandfather was surprised to see an international number showing up on his mobile. It seemed to be from a country with international code ++380. "This is not from Russia as I know that country's code to be beginning with ++7 as Mahesh was studying there?" He thought out aloud muttering to himself.
Now, there was a man speaking on the phone. He first spoke in Russian then switched over to English.
Mahesh's father, was called Pandit ji ( Learned one) by the people in this town though his name was Dinesh Sharma. He knew English. In fact, most people from the upper and the middle strata of society knew English. It was only the lower classes who did not speak or understand English. But everyone in India knew 3-4 languages.
Pandit ji realized that the call was coming from a country of the former USSR. It was definitely not Russia as he was familiar with the International dialing code of Russia. After all his son had gone to study in Russia and would call up home at least once a week for a duration of 5 minutes or so, in order to inform his family that he was doing fine.
Pandit ji was remembering his son and was lost in his thoughts. He suddenly realized that there was someone at the other end who was trying to talk to him. He then started paying attention to what all was being conveyed over the phone.
The person said that he was calling from Ukraine and was Savtlana brother. Savtlana's mother wanted to give the orphaned girl a home.
Now, Pandit ji was annoyed about this development. He told Tania's uncle that his family were already contacting Tania through the Indian Embassy at Moscow. They wanted to bring Tania into the folds of their Indian family. They were already in the process of getting their passports renewed, getting Visas and booking a direct flight to Moscow. Due to health reasons, they would reach by 21st May 2020.
Tania's Uncle, Igor, tried to explain the same viewpoint that their family wanted to take Tania into the fold of their family. Soon there was a heated discussion between the two men. Svetlana's mother and Mahesh's mother intervened and got the two men to calm down. Svetlana's mother could not speak English fluently and the same was the case with Mahesh's mother. Both the grandmothers were trying to give their granddaughter a better family life. Finally, they decided to speak to each other and with their broken English, they managed to convince each other and the menfolks that they would decide what was good for their granddaughter. The final decision would be left to Tania to decide what she wanted to do.
The menfolks had been too stubborn and had never tried reconciliation between the children and themselves. As a result of their stupidity, their children and their granddaughter had to suffer alone all these years. Now, Nikita (Svetlana's mother) and Mira (Mahesh's mother) would not let Tania suffer anymore.