October 19, 2003

Living in an apartment is like travelling in a public bus — you see people climbing in and out without courtesy; you don’t know who the person sitting next to you is or from where he comes and where will he go

LIVING in an apartment is not a joke; but it becomes a joke if you are living on the ground floor. It is all fun and frolic if you are living on the top floor. You become a heavenly body, fluttering and flying the staircase from the ground to the skies. I happen to live in a ground floor apartment. When I sold my house and moved to a scantily populated apartment complex, the first few days were spent in the heat of shifting and settling down.

The came the shock. While having my first leisure nap, I woke up with a jolt due to the thundering roar of a car parked right next to my bedroom window. There was not one but many cars lined up against the wall of my bedroom, and it sounded as if my bed was in the parking lot, too. The cars belonged to a family who were in the car dealing business and they were using the space as a subsidiary of their showroom parking lot. I was aghast; but after a few siesta-deprived afternoons, my mind started to work. A shovel in hand, I dug holes and paved beds for plantations. I already had gotten some bushes from a nursery. Overnight, the small backyard turned into a place smiling with greenery and flowers. As the land was virgin, they shot up within weeks and invited visitors like honeybees, butterflies and birds of all colours and species. Morning walkers stopped there to take a deep breath.

The beauty of my small backyard continued until the top floor was occupied by a family of about fifteen members, their ages ranged from one month to 75 years. For them, the ground floor meant a lot more than a dustbin. From the garbage they were throwing down, I could make out what were they having for lunch, dinner and snacks, what diseases they were suffering from, what brand of nappies they were using for toddlers, etc. Twice a week, they observed days of laundry. Drippings from hung-up laundry were indicative enough that the women of the household had little strength in their arms and hands. One Sunday, there came the loud noise of an empty soft drink bottle being smashed. One of the kids, after enjoying the drink, aimed the bottle at my car parked at the front, but fortunately the strong morning breeze gave it a little swing and the already cracked windscreen of my car was saved from turning into splinters. That morning, I climbed all the way up to the fourth floor and came to know that how people brazenly coined lies and loathed to speak the truth. I was not there to hang them for what their child did, but only to ask them to teach him how to live in a community.

Friendly words proved fruitless. Rather, they brought plenty of fruit-peel throws at both sides of the block. When civility failed, insolence proved most fruitful. As a first step, I collected the garbage in a plastic bag and put it on the bonnet of their car with a polite word ‘something they had lost and were perhaps looking for’. Next, I hung the bag from their front-door knob and finally scattered at the entrance of their apartment. It worked.

Besides many ignorable problems, the only one left was the feed for pigeons they scattered in their balcony. So far, I had nothing to do with it. But the sweeper, with a single brush of her broom, sweep it down, providing enough food for the ants. When I pointed out the issue to the dear lady, pat came the reply that she herself wondered where the feed was coming from in her balcony in the first place.

Last but not the least, there arose the problem of a clogged sewerage line. It turned out to be the divine duty of the ground floor occupant to get it going as the last opening happened to be in my kitchen. As a last resort, I could only look up to the skies for relief. On my own, I separated my line from the rest and enjoyed a few days of relief. The family on top moved away as they grew in number through marriages and births, besides the tragic stroke that struck the eldest member of the family, making it difficult for him to climb up and down four floors. They moved away, but left behind a clogged sewerage line with which I had absolutely no concern.

Living in an apartment is like travelling in a public bus. You see people climbing in and out without courtesy nods. You don’t know who the person sitting next to you is; from where he comes and where he will go. Similarly, you see household things being loaded and unloaded at various blocks of the complex without knowing who has moved in or out. It is through the network of gossiping maids that you come to know about the many changes taking place in the surroundings.

One fine day, a nuclear family moved in the top-floor apartment. I was relieved with the idea that lesser the population, the smaller the problems. I could not envisage what lay in store for me. After some time, a waterfall of stinking sewage became a constant feature, flowing right onto the awning of my kitchen window.

A genius cleaner suggested inserting a 20-foot long steel pipe in the sewerage line from the top to get the flow going. His grip was not strong enough and the pipe freed loose from the hands of the sweeper and got stuck in the line of the apartment on the first floor. The line had to be broken and instead of taking out the pipe, pushed it down further, ultimately getting it stuck in the line passing through my kitchen. For the relief of the neighbours living on the upper floors, I went through the drill of breaking the line and then cutting the insertion in pieces to take it out. Once again, I saw trucks loaded with household items going out and coming in. The people on top moved out, leaving me with the task of writing down memos starting with ‘please’ and ending with don’ts. Usually, people with the least civic sense take such reminders as personal insults. By the way, someone spotted a beehive in a bougainvillea at the backyard. He torched the hive at some odd hour of the night. From that time on, I did not see a single honeybee around. Butterflies also stopped hovering over the plants and the birds stopped singing. But I do see an aged lady on her morning walks with a pair of scissors and a plastic bag, cutting flowers and stealthily putting them in her bag and walking away, all while rolling her fingers on rosary beads. No, I will not mention the petty thefts committed around like stealing the side-view mirrors of cars, flowerpots, towels or anything left outside overnight because that hurts the ego of the residents.

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