It is 11 a.m. I look at the three buckets of water lined up in the bathroom. I know I will have no access to any water till 5 p.m. I’m not sure if these three buckets of water will last me till 5 p.m. But I cannot tolerate the foul stench coming from the balcony. I decide to manage with a little less water. So I lift one bucket of water, fling it across the water outlet of our balcony and hold my breath while I do so. I then march into my ground floor flat with utter disgust and slam the door shut.
The entire building is full of literate folks. Decent people. Yet, they water their plants and train their bloody dogs – no bitches – to pee in their balconies. The plant wali lives on the third floor. The bitch wala lives on the second floor. And the water from her plants and the urine of his dog drips right into the open area outside our ground floor flat.
We can’t even stand there – let alone sit and talk over the phone or dry our clothes. Swach Bharat Abhiyaan be damned. They will flunk in even the Swach Society Abhiyaan. Such people don’t have the time to think about others. They will walk right past that very spot. But they are such super special people – you see – that little things like foul odour and muddy water does not matter to them. They will stand right next to that filthy foul smelling puddle, rev up their two-wheelers and zoom off to work with a serene look on their faces.
Until a few years back, I honestly thought such specimens were a rare breed and I was unfortunate enough to have them as neighbours. But I was mistaken. Drastically mistaken. We move houses often. And it is the same everywhere. I had the misfortune of living in an extremely elite society a few years back. The flat was surrounded by nature. It was very beautiful and quiet. Ours was the only flat on the fourth floor and we had three huge terraces around us. We felt we were the luckiest people to have found a flat like this one. But we were so very mistaken.
The residents of the building had dumped huge car tyres, broken pots with plants and kitchen clutter in all the terraces. Yet there was enough space for us to walk around. We ignored the mess. To our peril. During the monsoons, all three terraces were infested with furry black caterpillars. And to our utter horror, they soon multiplied and started crawling all over our house, onto our beds, inside our shoes and over the ceiling too. They were everywhere. I cried my soul out during that entire phase. It was one of the most horrible experiences of my entire life. I swear.
I was so furious with the way these extremely affluent well-educated people were behaving. We were getting rashes all over our bodies due to these caterpillars. And without thinking twice I asked my maid to throw the clutter into the forest area that was just a wall away from our building. I even paid her to do so. That was the only way to stop the infestation from spreading….
Wait. Hear me out. Instead of apologizing for all the trouble that they had created for us, these super-rich elite educated globetrotting citizens came to our house and started fighting with us. It was their property they said. And so we had no right to touch it without their permission. The norms of this civilized educated society prescribed this in writing. So I ended up paying for the damage I had caused. Wow! What a wonderful society it was to live in.
For the next three years, I went running from pillar to post and begged, literally begged the society to get pest control done before the monsoons. They were such magnanimous folks you see – that they would send the pest control bhaiya to my house. After that, it was up to me to stand in the pouring rain and get pest control done for the entire building. The infestation bothered only me, No? So I had to do the needful. So simple. That’s how things work in real life and we learn to live with it too.
Such things rarely anger me now. Living in different houses and with all kinds of people has made me immune I suppose. But the entire rush of bitter emotions came flooding back last week when I heard a woman screaming her lungs out at 8.30 a.m. I looked out of the window to see why she was using such foul vile language so early in the morning and ended up admiring her. She was dressed up in official clothes and someone had watered their plants generously just when she was starting her two-wheeler – ruining her clothes and her day.
But unlike me, she did not keep quiet. She cursed them using the choicest expletives, gave the watchman a good piece of her mind for trying to cover up for them, demanded that he go up to their flat right away and instruct them – not request – instruct them to remove their plants from their window sills – NOW. She waited there till he did what she ordered him to do. Another lady who was also off to work at the same time supported her by screaming at the entire society in a loud voice.
I did respect, admire and applaud them that day. They dared to tell people that they were doing the wrong thing. But maybe over years, or with age, I had realized that all this anger is misplaced. I just ended up ruining my day. And I was right in my own weird way too. For despite all the ruckus that the two ladies had created, I could see from my window that not a single plant had moved out from any of the window sills.
That night, I went out for a long walk all by myself around the car park in our building. I live beside a 21 storey building. And one extremely generous neighbour of ours, god knows who this blessed soul is, decided to feed the dogs that roamed in the open around our society. So she wrapped up two nicely browned chappatis along with the leftover sabji and tossed them out from her window. They missed the target area and fell right in front of me, narrowly missing my head.
I stepped around the messy rotis and continued walking. I was determined. I wouldn’t let such folks ruin my day. I was fortunate to witness only a couple of flying rotis. I said that to myself. Loudly. Others had witnessed used sanitary napkins falling around them. They were mere rotis after all…..
Years back, when I was a teenager, we used to watch an advertisement for Onida TV which said, “Neighbour’s envy owner’s pride.” For this to happen, we need to be on good terms, or at least on talking terms with our neighbours. Not all people are uncivilized. I know. I have lived next to some really beautiful neighbours too.
But maybe such bitter experiences have soured me up for life. I don’t really know the reason. Often I don’t bother to probe too deeply within myself too. All I know is that I hesitate a hundred times before I forge bonds with my neighbours now. Good fences make good neighbours is what I practise more consciously these days. I know I am wrong. But I don’t want to change anyone else now. I prefer to change myself. I keep to myself. I ensure I don’t do such things. And that is good enough for me.