Apartment living has brought neighbours closer. In geographical terms, I mean. Where a yard and a fence once separated them, now only a small piece of concrete flooring does. This closeness enhances life, wheeling in many benefits. One of them is music and saving on CDs. Remember the self-taught drummer who thought he was treating his neighbours to good music, as he racketed through entire nights mastering illustrated lessons in ‘Become A Drummer In 30 Days’? Or the neighbour at an apartment complex who turned to music therapy to deal with a rough patch? Listening to extreme metal, his speakers at full blast and the door ajar, was his idea of musical cure. With neighbours such as these, look at how much you can save without having to spend on CDs.
As I have never lived in a flat, mine is at best an outsider’s view on the subject. Vidhya Srinivasan a marketing communication professional, who lives in a complex in Velachery enjoying the advantage of having 12 families as her neighbours, holds forth on it with the authority of someone who has reaped these benefits.
Topping her list is conflict resolution skills. Listen to her. “In a complex, possibilities for conflict are numerous. From the lift door left open to a car parked in the space designated for somebody else, there is always something to spark a row. Having had a ringside view of such fights and their resolution, I have learnt what it takes to resolve conflicts. Marketing communication is all about understanding consumer psyche and such situations give you a chance to observe human behaviour at close quarters and the learning can be applied to the market place. I have also lived in an independent house, where opportunities of this kind are considerably fewer. There, conflicts are infrequent and far from fierce: it usually has to do with a coconut falling from a tree and landing in a neighbour’s place.”
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Vidhya demolishes the hare-brained belief that women are inept at reversing cars. She is an ace driver with excellent reversing skills, which she improved at the complex. “Always trust a neighbour to have parked his car haphzardly. Pulling my car out of such tangles regularly has helped,” laughs Vidhya.
Among the other exquisite advantages is a better understanding of style and good living. I am convinced most people would have bigger and better wheels if they moved into an apartment complex. I believe a small car actually does not look small until parked beside a bigger car. I own a pocket-sized hatchback and my two children, the older one just seven years old, are happy with it. Probably, if we had been living in a tower of residential units, they would have seen the car in its proper dimensions, where it might have been parked beside a sedan, every day, and look dwarfed. I know my children: they would have badgered me until the hatchback was replaced by a sedan, the same one as the neighbours’. Isn’t that a good thing, moving up in wheels?
That takes us to the subject of keeping up with the Joneses — a phrase coined when apartment living was unheard of, so they stopped with the only neighbours they had, which were the Joneses. In an apartment complex, there is a lot more keeping up to do, which is not bad at all. Matching strides with the Krishnans and Johns — and, what is the family at B4? Oh yes, the Rajans — and the Rajans will keep one’s social muscles well-exercised.
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