Dmitriy reminisces about his grandparents and recounts what his grandmother told him about how a Kalmyk man should be: We spoke with our grandmother in Kalmyk. That is how I learnt Kalmyk. When I started school, I did not know a single word in Russian. We had a Russian neighbor who taught us Russian. After our grandmother died, we began to talk among ourselves in Russian. According to my grandmother, a Kalmyk man should be as follows. He feeds his family and doesn’t shy away from slaughtering livestock because cattle is the source of food for Kalmyks. There is a saying ‘A sheep lives for the sake of its fat tail, and a man lives for the sake of his children’ (Khon suulin tolya, kun kuukdin tolya). So a man should think about how to feed and educate his children. In the past many were illiterate, and our grandfather received a very good education by the standards for those times. When we were sent to Siberia, my grandfather was appointed chairman of a collective farm. In Siberia, he looked after all his relatives, thanks to whom we all survived Siberia.