In the small Russian city, Yoshkar-Ola, there are now 2,500 foreign students, among them, Indians too. For a region with a population of 2,50,000, it is a great number.
There has been a sharp spike in the number of overseas students throughout the country. In 2015, about 250,000 foreign students came to Russian universities. In one year, that number increased by 13%, according to the figures gathered by the Institute of International Education’s Project Atlas.
Breaking ice
I asked my long-time friend and teacher of Russian as a foreign language, Alevtina, about her foreign students, and she invited me to the classes. The group I had chosen consisted of about ten Indian freshmen. One of the students, Saurabh Tripathi asked me: “Do you like chocolate?” “Sure, I do,” was my answer. “Me too,” he said. I didn’t expect that trivial conversation to turn into one about pursuing careers and passions.
Saurabh likes chocolate with a 70% cocoa content made in Russia. But besides that, global politics, economics, Sanskrit and anatomy pique his curiosity. He moved to Russia from India in 2016 for a six-year specialist’s degree programme in general medicine at Mari State University. I asked: “You have been living alone in a foreign land almost for two years. Four years are yet to come. Do you like living away from your family?” He answered immediately: “No, I don’t. Parents are always your moral support”.
During his first winter here, Saurabh became very sick. At the hospital, he was the patient with the language barrier. The doctors’ abilities to speak English were quite limited. At the time, Saurabh wasn’t proficient in Russian: “I couldn’t speak any coherent sentences. My new friends in Russia helped me adapt to the hospital environment”.
The most obvious challenge for him when it came to his academics, was the language barrier. “This city has the best teachers. But the language, or rather, the ability to perform in it, makes a lot of difference.” I asked how he overcame it and his answer is worthy of deep reflection: “Everything can be simplified. I read mostly academic books, which helps me learn the language.”
Among Russians, Saurabh found enthusiastic strangers. He shared a funny anecdote: Saurabh was in a hurry to go to the hospital. When he got his cab, he realised that he didn’t have any cash. Nevertheless, he sat in the passenger seat. The driver was in awe of transporting a “real Indian”. He was delighted, and spoke to Saurabh in a mix of Russian and English: “Oh, indusskiy my brat !” [Oh, you are my Indian brother].
When they reached the destination, Saurabh told him that he had no cash, but offered to pay by debit card. The taxi driver said: “You are my friend, you are from India. No need to pay.”
Saurabh’s tip to anyone who wants to live abroad: “Be careful about everything. Make the right decisions about your life. That’s it.”
The author is a young journalist from Russia.
