MKC5 - The Day I Lost My Shit

There is a hierarchy of laws in this country. The constitution of the country reigns supreme with the Supreme Court of India being its guardian. The Indian legislature derives its powers from the constitution and creates laws, which are known as “acts” and “codes” in legal parlance. These Codes have the power to delegate procedural matters to civil bodies such as municipalities. These municipalities run day-to-day functions of the government by a set of rules and regulations. These municipalities also allow non-statutoy associations like residential buildings to frame their own by-laws which are applicable only to their own people and are not exactly “laws” in the legal sense. And when all this civic social structure fails, we simply listen to Modi ji’s Man ki Baat as the one true dictum.

 

So when the building’s committee told us that the making of two doors was against the building rules, I did three things – (1) I asked them for the by-laws of the building where such rules and regulations would be listed; (2) I told them that even if such sets of by-laws existed, they would be subservient (no that’s a big word for my committee to understand) acquiescent (that’s worse) subordinate (getting there) lower than the municipal laws under which my deed was constructed; and (3) I thought that they were a bunch of cunts. Thankfully I didn’t say this last one out loud.

 

The building’s wise-ass committee told us that we better not teach them laws. The building had many good lawyers of its own. And the committee knew the very best lawyers in the city. Somehow the committee confused “knowing lawyers” with “knowing the law”. While I was getting used to the stupidity, I told them that the committee might know the very best of the best lawyers in the city. But they did not know squat about the law.

 

For example, at one point Banraakas came at me with a page from the deed, which said that no flat-owner was allowed to have a protrusion from the flat. I calmly said yes, and a door is not a protrusion. The large shoe-cabinet outside Banraakas’ apartment, that was a protrusion. So Banraakas asked me what a protrusion was.

 

‘See you have a face. It’s mostly a flat face. But the nose comes out of the flatness of your face like a mountain. That’s a protrusion.’

 

I can’t say I was entirely cool about the situation. But looking at his face, I could not think of a better example to explain the word “protrusion”. To my explanation Banraakas had one reply – Humko to itna angreji nahi aata hai (I am an illiterate). Which we agreed upon. My only question was, ‘then why are you walking with this one word from one line in a registered deed you motherfucking nitwit!’ But again, I did not say that.

 

But coming back to the by-laws. This was a ten-year old building. Which was apparently being managed for the last ten years. And like every other community of 500 humans, it had its own problems. But it was a little surprising that the question of by-laws kept getting deflected. Honestly if someone had asked me for a copy of laws so many times, I would have thrown the bunch of papers in his face after ensuring the papers were properly hard-bound. I expected to be hit in the face with something similar. I love to be hit in the face with laws. But this was the first time I was being hit in the face with brute strength and glorified ignorance. After asking for the by-laws on WhatsApp, email, on phone, in-person, and (maybe it might have worked) on LinkedIn, I realized that there could be only one reason why they were not sharing the by-laws. The dog ate the homework of the person in-charge of making the by-laws.

 

Which made us probe deeper. We realized that the “committee” worked under the guise of a “private limited company” and not a “housing society”. Which was to say that a zebra was roaming the field in the guise of a horse. Now I have nothing against zebras per say. But zebras are bastards! You will never see a ranger ride on a zebra to roam the forests, just like you won’t see a sad person invite a panther into their home because they’re related to cats (the panther, not the person). So anyway, it’s only a legal technicality which rich people can afford to ignore. As long as the company (or the housing society) was owned by the flat-owners. BUZZ! Wrong again. This private limited company cum housing society was owned by… “drumrolls” the members of the committee. So basically all our building’s common amenities, the swimming pool, the gym, the garden, the lockers, the sauna, the roof, the façade, and the big poster of young girls practicing yoga at the gym, was all owned by eight people. In a building of over 120 flats and 500 residents. The pretend-committee, had forgotten to (1) make the rules and (2) distribute shares to the residents. For the last 10 years.

 

Do you remember the time when the British were in India? Of course you don’t. You weren’t born then. But do you know why they left? Because at some point Indians thought,

‘The British are treating us pretty damn badly. Meh! We could do that ourselves.’

 

And so a guy stayed hungry in jail and got decorated as “Mahatama” and we got democracy. 75 years later, we had housing society rules which we were ignoring and were arguing about a door in a wall. Which was not a protrusion.

 

But might prevailed where cooler heads didn’t. And we lost our door. And I took a trip to Bangalore. Because that is what you do when Kolkata fails you. You go to a place where there’s still hope in the future and dates on Bumble. I found some solace in friends’ apartments (which I noticed, all had only one door) and drinking myself blind. I took one piece of wisdom while coming back which was superior to any law laid in the Indian constitution – “When you wrestle a pig, you get muddy. And the pic enjoys it.”

MKC4 - With Friends Like These

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MKC3 - Moronic Verses

This episode was written on the day of the attack on Salman Rushdie and the title bears tribute to his book. We wish Mr. Rushdie a speedy recovery and hope he writes more books worth banning in the more regressive parts of the world.

 

There is only one thing that is more stupid than people who unwittingly do not follow the law. And that is people who wittingly follow the law. At this time, there were two doors in our apartment. One on the north-south wall, and another on the east-west wall. And my family had moved to disagreeing about more meaningful things in life like furniture and why my Mom should decide the furniture for me. It was the same reason as why my Mom should decide my wife for me. And it was equally stupid.

 

As I was following the peaceful process of Gandhian disagreement that morning, the head laborer called me and said that he had been stopped from entering the building. Because there were two doors to the apartment which the building “society” had objected to. Now there were many different thoughts that came to me when this happened. (1) Who be this “society” that my labor speaks of? (2) Why would they have a problem if I had two doors to my apartment? (3) If they did have a problem, why didn’t they contact me first instead of suddenly stopping the laborers from entering? (4) Could they stop the laborers from entering? And most importantly, (5) if they stopped the laborers from entering the building, who the fuck would seal up the door they were objecting to in the first place?

 

It took my about 10 seconds to process these thoughts in my head. I spent the next 10 telling my laborer to go in anyway and continue the work. But he said he was not being allowed to go in. I asked if he was being physically blocked. And then he spent the next 10 seconds processing the answer. He replied in affirmative. Now I had laborers standing outside the door of the building, not being able to enter. It was time for my fat ass to leave the couch and walk for myself. I would trample the goons who stopped my men, MY MEN, from entering the building.

20 minutes later, I completed my breakfast and went to the new building. Where the building security guards were not allowing my laborers to go in. By “not allowing”, they meant they were not taking their usual entry time and signatures at the entrance gate. Which my hard-working laborers took to mean that they could not go in. Because a figure of authority in a uniform had said so. So first I reminded the laborers who is paying them. And told them to march off to the apartment and continue the work. Next I enquired from the security guards who is paying THEM. And asked them to be presented before me. Which of course they didn’t.

 

But my laborers were in. And my work was being done. So all seemed to be in balance with the world. The security guards said that they would be in trouble by the “committee” of the building. I asked who this “committee” was and if they could speak to me in-person. The guards told me that the sacred “committee” held mass every Sunday at 10:00 AM and I could meet them then. But the committee had decided to stop my laborers from entering the building without the occurrence of a Sunday. It must have been divine intervention. Scolding the guards, I went on my way. Thinking that I had won the war. Little did I know, the battle was only beginning.

The next day my laborers called me again that they were being held at the building gate. I told them to go in anyway. But they said that they were being held physically this time. I sighed. A glass of chocolate milkshake and 30 minutes later, I was at the new building again. It was true. The guards were blockading my laborers physically this time. They were courteous enough to allow me in. Once in, I scolded the guards again. And moved my laborers in again. When the guards told me that they got a hefty scolding from the “committee” yesterday. And they were only doing what was being instructed to them. I asked the guards to either talk to me, or bring before someone who could take decisions. If I was going to waste my time with someone who only responded in “that is my instruction” and deferred decision making, I’d rather have it in a courtroom so someone could at least make money out of it. I wasn’t going to sit around watching my laborers earn a daily wage simply because a bunch of security guards were instructed to stop my laborers. And none of these wise-assed “committee” people would meet me directly.

 

“I am Groot,” the gentleman before me introduced himself.

 

Someone from the “committee” had finally appeared to “sort out the issue”. What had happened was that since we had made two doors in the apartment, several people in the building had objected. Simply because what goes on in my flat, which was not adjacent to or overlooking ANY other flat, nor shared a wall or a lobby with ANYONE, was still somehow EVERYONE’s business. And since they had objected to the committee, the committee had thought it fine to block my laborers. Because that is how problems are solved.

 

“I am Groot.” Groot had said that he was the designated person of the committee to sort out disputes amicably. He understood that we are a family like him, and no one wants any bother from anyone and everyone simply wants to live a peaceful life. The committee had objected to there being two doors as it was against the committee rules. We told Mr. Groot that the committee did not have the power to decide where the gate to our apartment would be. And in case the committee had a legitimate reason to not allow the two doors, we will gladly close off the original gate. But there has to be a legitimate reason. Mr. Groot didn’t seem to understand the words “legitimate” or “reason”. In fact, I suspected that his vocabulary was be very limited.

 

“I am Groot.” We spoke to Mr. Groot for about an hour. Mostly, he seemed to be repeating what he had already said. And we agreed that let us meet the committee in the meeting on Sunday, and if then the we decide if to keep only one gate, we would close off one gate. But we had already said that before. We asked Mr. Groot whether that was acceptable.

 

“I am Groot,” he replied.

MKC2 - Too Many Cooks

If you have ever been involved in the interior decorations of your own house, then you know you need therapy to recover from the experience. The amount of money you will spend on therapy is directly proportional to the number of decision-makers at your home. Men, when left to their own devices, will purchase a table that looks like this:

Men will buy sofas that look like this

And men will stock their kitchens like this

There is a reason why there are only cave-men and no cave-women. Because if you were to bring a woman into a cave, it would end up something like this.

Naturally, when four adults and one adult-pretender from my family put our brains together on what to do with our new apartment, I often left the scene wondering who was really the adult-pretender. The only thing we did agree on was that we were not able to decide anything by ourselves. So we hired an interior decorator. Now we were paying the interior decorator AND disagreeing among ourselves. Paying an enormous sum of money for a meaningless thing is usually how Indian families justify in-house problems. If you think I am wrong, just be a part of the next wedding that happens in your family. If that doesn’t make you agree with me, be a part of the next marriage. Big projects are to Indian families what chaos was to Littlefinger. And sooner or later, we find ourselves falling down a hole for the very same reasons. Lack of foundations. And logic.

 

So we went over the floor plan of the apartment. And decided that the lump of floor, ceiling, and walls that we had so lovingly found perfect till a few months ago had a LOT of scope for improvement, which is a polite way of saying that we were dissatisfied with everything. We could bring down a wall here and extend the kitchen there. We could bring in the servant quarter which would, my dad explained, increase the area, and hence the value of the apartment by 2.86%. We could (or maybe could not) extend the master bedroom into the hall making the bedroom bigger. But the hall smaller. We all agreed at this point that size matters. We mostly disagreed about the thing whose size mattered the most.

 

One of the most important questions that we debated about was – where would be the door to the apartment. Now the apartment already did have a door. It was a good door. It was set on three hinges and swayed like the skirt of Marilyn Monroe. We were able to open and close it. But most importantly we were able to walk in and out of it. It did everything we expected a door to do. Overall, it was a good door. Personally, I felt that given some time, I would have been able to toilet-train the door. Although I didn’t really mind if it didn’t learn. It was a good door nevertheless.

 

But that door, that wretched unlucky door, made one of the biggest cardinal sins a door could make in Indian society. Just like a girl is cursed for life if born at the wrong date and time (her real curse is being born to the wrong parents), our door was cursed because our Rs. 3,000 per hour Vaastu expert told us that the door was on the wrong wall. And my Dad gasped! And my Mom gasped! And my door gasped!

 

Vaastu shastra is the Indian system of architecture loosely based on (copied from) the Chinese system of Feng Shui. But like most things Indians do, we don’t know how far to take a stupid idea. So whatever China did, India tried to do better. When China brought in an authoritarian government, Indians declared the emergency. When China became the most populous nation in the world, Indians started to copulate like crazy. When China became the manufacturing powerhouse for the USA, Indians started sending their children to the USA. And when China promoted their system of superstitions, Indians copied it and named it “Vaastu shastra”. Honestly, I think there are better people to visit for Rs. 3,000 per hour. They might not be architecture experts, but they had a better understanding of what to put where in order to bring happiness.

 

But the deed was done. The words were spoken. The door was wrong. We all knew what would happen now. Either the door would have to marry a tree, which would be weird even for my parents. Or the door would be sealed shut. Which would create an innocuous problem of going in and out of the apartment. Which meant that we needed a new door. On a new wall. Thankfully, we had another wall. That’s the beauty of being rich. You don’t like the door on the wall? Try a different wall. This is different from my 7’ by 11’ college room where one of the walls WAS the door. Now even my bathroom is as big as that 77 sqft room. (I’m kidding. My bathroom is WAY bigger).

The new door on the new wall would be nice. Of course it wouldn’t sway like Marilyn Mornoe’s skirt. But in post-2014 India we did not need a door that swayed like the skirt of some English blonde. We had Alia Bhatt. And we did not care if her skirt did not fly. In fact, we did not care if there was no skirt at all. In fact, we preferred it.

 

I’m sorry. I digressed again. We were talking about the door. So the new door… would be nice. It would open into a different part of the hall. It would keep visitors from walking right into our home and would make them take a small detour. Not a big one. We’re not THAT rich. But anyone coming in would need to take 6 extra steps to walk into the hall. Which was nice, Mom said. There’re a certain class of people who should not be brought into the house and need to stay on the outer edges of the home. At first I was admonished! My Mom was such a classist. All these years, and I didn’t even know! Now we finally had something to bond over. Later I realized that she was talking about my friends.

 

So the new door created a few problems. And solved some others. And we were to decide which problems we would live with. And we thought over it for a long time. And then we slept over it. And then we slept over it again. And then I had a Tinder date where I slept over it again and again and again that night. Finally, we had a solution. And as it went with my date that night, we would use both the gates!

MKC1 - Love Thy Neighbor

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Matthew 22:39

 

I am not the most religious of people. But I am no stranger to ‘loving my neighbor’. During my time in Mumbai I praised the Lord for placing me opposite to one of His (/ Her / Their) finest creations who, for the longest time, remained blissfully unaware that her kitchen had a window overlooking mine. Along with 20 other kitchens in our apartment complex.

 

When people ask me what got me through the lockdown, I simply say, “mere saamne wali khidki mein ek chaand ka tukda rehta tha.” Two months later she saw me gawking and the curtains finally came down; and so did my rental agreement. And I found myself in the most progressive city of the 1980s – Kolkata.

 

It is often said that the destitute of this era are better equipped and live longer lives than the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Kolkata used to be the most progressive city in India in the 1980s and the second-most important city of the British Empire (if you’re wondering what was the most important city, don’t worry, so are the British). In the 21^st century, Kolkata remains the most progressive city of the 1980s. And it is as alive as the British Empire is in India; or in Britain for that matter. While the country and the continent moved ahead with the times, Kolkata held on to the 80s and stood still. It was the classic case of an immovable object colliding with – nothing! So my emotions would be understated in saying that moving back to Kolkata after 13 years was unnerving. In reality, was outrightly nerve-wracking.

 

But this series is not about Kolkata. Nor, regrettably, is it about my oblivious neighbor from Mumbai. This series is about my new neighbors; the ones who taught me what it truly means to love thy neighbor.

 

My new neighbors are opulent, ambrosial, pulchritudinous, and perspicacious people. Basically, I would use words for them that Shashi Tharoor might use for praising someone; while letting them and everyone around them know how moronic they really are.

 

I had always felt that living opposite to my Mumbai neighbor was like living in Holland. Now living with my new neighbors feels like living next to France.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Ones who know where, what, and why Holland is, or would at least Google it after reading these words. The other kind would come to be my new neighbors. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We need to start at the beginning.

 

In the beginning, God said, ‘let there be light.’ But that is wrong, mostly because we are living in post-2014 India. Hence, in the beginning, Lord Bramha opened his eyes, and 150 trillion years later, I came back to Kolkata at a marriageable age.

 

My family had been living in the same building for the last 30 years. Why you ask? [Enter Sheldon Cooper] In the summers, that building faced the least amount of electrical outages usual to Kolkata. Even the outages were normally supplemented by an in-house generator powerful enough to operate fans and occasionally, even computers. The apartment was directly in the path of a south-Kolkata cross breeze created by opening windows at the north and south walls. There were two TV sets – a big one with an Amazon Fire Stick in the hall and a small one in the parents’ room with an Airtel set-top box. The big TV was close to the dining table at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide to create a parallax distortion. In my ever-changing world, that building was a single point of consistency. A place where I always came back to after living nomadically in some obscure corner of the world. If my life were expressed as a function on a 4-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, that building at the time of my birth would be (0,0,0,0).

 

I am sorry. I got a little carried away there. But this is a ruse. Writing that paragraph ensures that the people reading further are aware of the modern civilized world. This also ensures that my neighbors will never read beyond these words. Hence, I will not be a victim of mob lynching. Another reason is to tell my readers - PRICE NEGOTIABLE.

 

So in the beginning, I was happy with my home. And as most 30 year olds of my generation would agree, if you’re a gleeful independent stable 30 year old living with an Indian family, then you’re not going to stay happy for long.

 

My family realized that my building, which had produced a fine specimen of society like myself, was no longer fit to raise kids. I also agreed that my existing building was no longer fit to raise my senior parents. So we decided to move elsewhere. Somewhere with a basketball court for kids, yoga room for my mom, and a swimming pool for myself. Can I swim you ask? How is that relevant for enjoying a swimming pool?

 

With these considerations in mind, we chanced upon an apartment, 300 meters away from our existing building. It was everything we were looking for. It had a high ceiling that relatives would be jealous of and we would be clueless about how to use (size matters). It had a garden on the second floor that I imagined my mom would spend her afternoons in. Or I would, in case my mom didn’t. It had a swimming pool - on our floor! And as my Tinder location settings would tell me, the place was “vibrant”. I was floored. So was the apartment. In Italian marble.

 

So 3 months and a 20 year mortgage agreement later, we were the owners of 1DA, Manikala, Kolkata.

 

That’s when we met the neighbors.