Despite the Real Estate Regulation Act and its noble intentions and despite all the ballyhooed advancements of technology, house hunting still has the unpredictability of an IPL match in the death overs. There are many things you can pin down. The carpet area of your prospective apartment you measure to the last millimetre. You can gauge the quality of construction, and you can predict with reasonable accuracy how long it will take for your investment to multiply. But what about the folks who have just entered your life — your brand new neighbours? They are the ones who bring in the “X factor” to the enterprise.
Homebuyers of a generation that has seen the 1968 hit Padosan may nurse expectations that a vision of loveliness will be visible through their front window. But such fantasies are eclipsed when reality, or more specifically, realty bites. Your front window reveals nothing more romantic than other houses like your own, entwined creepers and enough clothes hung out to dry to make a laundry rue the lost business.
Neighbours go through a process of transition. Before they acquire a name, they are alphanumeric. So I deduce that B 1206 must be the “work from home” breed — I have never seen him go out to work. K 14 or spouse has a green thumb — such a pretty rose garden they have set up on their terrace. Neighbours also allow me to try out my face-reading skills. Mr. Spectacles and Frown looks the crotchety type. Taken along with Ms. Stiff Upper Lip, they are sure to make the word “cooperative” in the society’s letterhead a misnomer.
Such speculation could well turn out to be false, for whom you draw in the neighbours’ lottery is entirely a matter between destiny and the general secretary of your society. In my time, I had a mixed bag. There was the strong, silent type — or perhaps, the not so strong but very silent. You could run into them in the lift and not get so much as a “hello” out of them. At the other end of the scale are the manic inquisitive. The prying kind, they will peel every detail about you, your family and friends — “Who was the one who came last evening?” or “Why do your in-laws never drop by?” If social media needs field reporters, my building has talent.
Neighbours show their true colours as serial, high-frequency borrowers. Beginning with coffee and sugar, they soon upgrade to the steam iron, high stools and even your jacket, if you happen to have the same collar size. Others are borrowers for the long haul. Your sewing machine which you last glimpsed before Deepavali will come back only in time for Christmas, when you will hear a gentle request for the oven.
Some neighbours are fans of a certain kind of music and assume that everyone else on the floor is a fan too. The great thing about a hard-rock-crazy neighbour of mine was that he was never stingy. He used to play his music system at full blast so that the whole suburb, as he put it, could listen in and enjoy. Coincidence, of course, but retail sales of earplugs saw a spurt in the vicinity.
Then, there was the hardcore dance enthusiast. I am sure she would have become the next Kanak Rele, if only she had chosen to go on stage. But she never did, preferring the floor above me, and sending plaster cascading into my carpet with every thump. Over the years, I have become the world’s original dance detective. From the pattern of the plaster scattered on the floor, I can tell whether she is doing Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam or Kathak.
You will think that I have been unlucky in picking up the nastiest neighbours. But then, you must not jump to conclusions after listening to one side of the story. If you are keen on hearing about a mean, penny-pinching, irascible old man who studiously avoids any form of social interaction, you will have to ask my neighbours.
jairam.menon@gmail.com
