‘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 21st 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.
