RuKsaK

Raking a seventy-minute zed across Seoul’s Subway system this week has pushed me into some silly reminiscing. About commuting. Like all monkeys, I despise being in the crush with all the other vacant travellers, hurtling in a screeching, tin box just to get food on the table.

It all reminded me of Moscow though, where conniving statisticians revealed that the average poor Muscovite spends around five years of his life scowling inside an underground train. One of those carriages is like a lock-up; sweaty, brimming with hate, dour air inside. It’s like prison without the interruption of rape. Ask a thousand Muscovites:
‘Would you swap your daily two hours of hell, totalling five years of your life, for a year in prison? After this year you’ll have the gift of self-teleportation.’

It wouldn’t be lack of gullibility preventing ‘yes’s’ – it’s just that people prefer their torture delivered in teaspoons I suppose.
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I used to teach a group of professors at the Moscow Nuclear Power Institute in a district named Vikhino. Vikhino was an eighty-minute, seventeen-station plummet down the purple line. It’s was a day’s work before the day’s work.

A lesson clip:
‘Are you sure this is the meaning of this word Mr.RuKsaK?’
‘Sure, I’m sure – that’s what it means. Now, tell me about Chernobyl.’
‘You knew about it before us.’
‘No, just tell me what it was like when you found out.’
‘I listened from BBC World Service. I used illegal radio frequency.’
‘Hang on. You were working for the Soviet Nuclear Power programme, right?’
‘Yes, they did not tell us anything until days after it happened. Like I have said, from BBC. Soviet Union liked its secrets.’
‘That’s quite amazing.’
‘There are many things you do not know. For example, Yuri Gagarin was not first man in space.’
‘Eh? So, who was?’
‘I do not know. All I know is, Yuri Gagarin was first one back from space.’
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The journey to these kind of English practice conversations started with a five minute shuffle to the nearest tram stop. Then fifteen minutes on that body-shaker and then onto the previously mentioned metro train. Getting off at Vikhino, I’d get an angry bus for ten more minutes before taking a lift to the seventh floor. I’d teach my native language for five hours and then repeat the above in reverse.

It was horrendous, but this week in Seoul I’m reminded of that commute and I go a shade of glaze, the trip’s in soft focus, and there I see the odd, unheard of smile, I get a seat and people happily chat. The chaotic rattling becomes a calming beat and the train glides smoothly through the tunnels.

Then I wallop the side of my skull and it all shudders back into the grotesque shape it really was.

That’s nostalgia for you – it’s just another appeasing chunk of self-deception. It’s Valium for the past.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Nostalgianol