Raise your hand if you know your neighbours. Raise both hands if you speak to them every day, and three if you deem them friends. God didn’t supply you with three hands? That doesn’t matter. I’m fairly certain that if you’re a city-dweller responding honestly to my command, you won’t need three anyway.
Defining ‘neighbour’ in an urban environment is not as easy as it sounds. If you live in a house, a neighbour is whoever lives opposite or behind you, or to your left or right; if in an apartment, whoever lives on the same floor as you. If you’re an upstairs tenant with a downstairs landlord, with a ‘side gate’ and external stairway leading up to your front door, your landlord becomes your neighbour, which may not be the happiest of arrangements. But strictly speaking, if you lived in an apartment complex with 600 flats, shouldn’t the occupants of the other 599 be considered your neighbours? Shouldn’t everyone living in your neighbourhood be called your neighbours?
In simpler times a neighbour was anybody who lived on your street. Whether your house was your own or rented, you pretty much lived there until you died. It became a ‘permanent address’ for your children after they moved out. These days, you may have noticed that on many government forms the ‘permanent address’ column has been replaced by ‘address to which mail should be sent’. Few things in life are permanent any more, least of all your place of residence. City neighbours are as fleeting as comets: removal vans appear practically every Sunday and tenants whizz in and out, hardly staying on long enough for you to bond with them — if you want to, that is. You tend not to acknowledge their arrival because you know they will soon depart. And when they leave there are no goodbyes because there were no hellos in the first place.
Neighbourliness, in a city, is somehow viewed as a drawback. Ads for pricey apartment complexes boast about their cunning architecture, which ensures that balconies do not face one another. No smells, no noise, no contact. Your neighbours may as well be non-existent. By modern urban standards a good neighbour is someone who’ll leave you alone. The only time you interact with him is to complain. In a voice dripping with strained politeness (you’re a decent citizen after all), you request him to keep the dog from barking, the cigarette smoke from wafting into your bedroom, and the wet clothes from dripping onto your dry ones on the balcony railing. Afternoon naps must not be disturbed by noisy equipment, and studious children, by late night revelry. No mixies, hammers or electric drills between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. please, and no loud music after 10 p.m. Some apartment associations go a step further and lay down rules to block people and practices they consider ‘undesirable’: no pets, no parties, no meat, no single men or women as tenants... prohibitions that smack of discrimination.
In simpler times a next-door neighbour was practically next of kin. Remember the village fence, a shaky structure made of dried thorny twigs, with an equally rickety bamboo gate, meant to keep out four-legged rather than two-legged intruders? The small town had the compound wall. Both fence and wall were not barriers but invitations: they were privy to many an exchange of confidences, for your neighbours’ lives were intimately linked to your own. You sent across festive treats and attended one another’s family functions. It’s not that such ties don’t exist in a modern city like ours, they do — but rarely. For instance an old friend of mine and his wife recently came to Bangalore to attend the wedding of the son of their landlord whose house they had rented when they lived here 25 years ago.
There is one major disadvantage I can think of, in having permanent neighbours. If you don’t get along with them you may have to tolerate them for the rest of your life. When I was growing up I knew of houses where a miniature version of the Kashmir dispute was in progress. This is how it usually pans out: Your neighbour wants to fortify a crumbling wall. He pulls it down. With measuring tape and ball of twine he marks his territory. But are the bricks in the new wall centred? You accuse him of encroachment because the brick must sit exactly midway on the boundary line; if the brick is six inches wide the line must bisect it so that it leaves three inches on either side, not a millimetre more or less or you’ll go to court. You’ll bear a lifelong grudge against your neighbour for having stolen three inches of your property.
Good fences make good neighbours, as the old English proverb goes. You must have a fence and clearly mark your limits, for your neighbours cannot be allowed to invade you at will. If it is a good fence, respected by both, there is harmony. You need to know your boundaries whether your neighbour is in the next house or in the next seat in your office. No trespassing. No disturbing the peace. Lean over three inches the wrong way and you may have to face legal action.
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