The quality of your life in an apartment will depend on whether you get a peace-loving neighbour or a touchy and irritable lot. Getting a sociable neighbour has become a matter of absolute luck. In today’s life where everyone appears to be busy, we barely get to see each other and keep tabs on others’ activities. There’s only one soul that knows what’s happening around: that one nitpicking and overly intrusive soul, the gossip-monger.
Life in an apartment complex can be challenging at times. It often seems like the whole universe is embodied in one place. Different people with their own ways. To mention a few, we have the rumour-rusher, the deserted player, the lone wolf, the consultant, the herdsman, the occasional befriender, and so on. Then there’s you, carrying that one nodding head with a fake smile to others’ words and unnecessary advice. But then, you console yourself that they are one inseparable part of the entertaining but dysfunctional apartment societies.
Here comes the worst neighbour, the Gossip-monger. You might experience the worst nightmare if you have one. I sometimes feel their life is so disproportionately disbalanced that they are only gratified by small talk and nonsensical chatter. They talk in such an unabashed manner and become so ultra-intrusive that it ultimately irritates you and makes you a hopeless soul. Those creepy looks, abrupt love and care, tonnes of inappropriate questions and pseudo-detective attitude — mostly you get that James Bond vibe from them.
The most terrible thing is that they always grin and behave with such poise that you can’t even figure out if it is actually them spreading the grapevine. Interfering tirelessly and hamming things up become a part of their daily chores.
Scuttlebutt neighbour can sometimes hit your morale if you are a vulnerable and sensitive soul. For me back then, personally as an independent woman in her 20s and staying away from family with a sister all alone, made things worse. People easily jump to conclusions and say something mean, and don’t really understand the repercussions it could cause in an individual’s life.
It’s true that opinions are made in the mind, and you can’t read and erase them all. At least now things to a certain extent are changing but today’s societal stigma could be so vast and deep as an ocean, that you have to push greatly and magnanimously to see the end of it.
When you are in the budding young age, such people can truly bother you and drag you down. At first you get bogged down. But in the end you accept to live with this eccentric neighbourhood. Time passes and you learn to take certain things with a pinch of salt. In life, everything that leaves a mark teaches you a lesson and ultimately makes you a better person.
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