The Moscow police

Seven or eight times in the span of four and a half days we were stopped by the police. Once only Kailash made a wrong turn. At other times, they stopped him on some imaginary pretext. If he drove cautiously, they thought that he was drunk and that was why he was going slowly. If he parked the car where everybody else was parking, they would come and harass him. They would take away his passport and papers — all to get a little bribe. He had rented an Italian car for me because he does not like Russian cars, and that made him a target for the police.

How many times we were stopped for fifteen or twenty minutes, and once even for an hour! One night, when we were coming back to the hotel, the policeman thought that we had been drinking vodka. An officer came and was waving his rifle at us, saying, “Out, out!” I remained seated in the car, but Kailash had to get out and answer their questions. How they tortured us! Another time we parked in front of a pizza store. Everybody was parking there, but the police harassed Kailash because they said he had parked illegally. They were very, very rude to him. It was all because he had an Italian car.