Badma recounts a story about a Kalmyk man called Bryudikov Bodva who could control the weather: In the past old men could predict the weather. They often gathered together and talked about the weather and the land. My grandmother’s younger brother, Bryudikov Bodva, could even influence the weather. When it was windy Bryudikov Bodva used to tie up a red ribbon behind his house and read prayers. Then the wind would calm down. One day two men, Bryudikov Bodva and the lama Bataev Nyama, decided to have a competition. Bryudikov Bodva asked Bataev Nyama whether he could bring a snow storm. Bataev Nyama replied: ‘I don’t know, first let’s see what you can do’. So Bryudikov Bodva called a storm that lasted for a week. The camels were covered in snow, people stopped fetching water, they ate snow instead. In the past, sheep grazed in the steppe by scrubbing the snow with their legs. That time it snowed so heavily that the sheep could not find food. Bataev Nyama begged my grandmother: ‘Elzyat, ask your younger brother to stop the storm. People are suffering, the livestock cannot find grass, everything is covered with the snow’. To which my grandmother said: ‘I didn’t tell you to compete with my brother. I know nothing. Go and ask him yourself’. At that time people themselves started to ask Bryudikov Bodva: ‘Bodva, please help us, stop the storm’. Bodva, who was 17 years old, replied: ‘Ask Bataev Nyama to stop the storm. He says that I am young and know nothing’. Several lamas read prayers but could not stop the storm. It was Bryudikov Bodva who stopped the storm in the end. I heard this story from an old man called Bankaev Bombsh. We (in our house) had a lot of statues of Buddhas, whom we wrapped in cloth and put on top of a high shelf. We used a ladder to reach it. We used to pray to all of them.