To be or not to be North-Indian
Slow death of neighbourly love
I moved out of my parent’s house about a year ago. Two months ago I moved back. Money was a little tight. This small little excursion out of my comfort zone led me to meet two of the most eccentric and insane characters I have ever met in my life(so far at least). I lived in a 2 BHK with three other roommates.
I was a Kannadiga who had moved into a house with three Tamilian roommates. Naturally our mode of communication with each other was in English, just with me that is. The three of them conversed in Tamil all the time. It felt strange at first, like they were plotting something against me or they were making fun of my very existence. None of this was true though, they were genuinely nice people. The insane and eccentric characters were not in our small wholesome little bachelor flat but they lived next door.
A few of our friends turned up home and we got some alcohol and cigarettes and we just sat around talking. There was a knock on our door. One of my roommates, Srinath got up to see who it was. It was our neighbours. They complained about the noise and how it was getting hard for them to sleep. We apologised, we reduced the volume of the music and we started talking in a lower tone. Nothing unusual, nothing too alarming, right? WRONG!
Every few days we started getting fucked royally up the keister. What started off as a normal conversation soon turned into full blown verbal fights.
“This is not a bar! You want to do all this type of nonsense then go to MG road!” the husband would say. “At 11 pm there should be pin drop silence!”
They would scream so loudly at us about us making noise; that there were times when we would burst out laughing at the irony. That didn’t go down well with them. They then decided to do a four-pronged attack. Divide and conquer.
“Navin(one of my other roommates), you and your three friends are OK, but that North Indian in your house needs to go!” the wife said.
She assumed I was North Indian because she was hearing our conversations through the wall, how I always communicated with them in English and how they communicated with each other in Tamil. The racism in that statement was quite strong, I needed to go not because I was a bad seed but I was North Indian. Now Navin being the chooth that he was didn’t correct her at all. He just nodded and assessed her statement.
“I will talk to the North Indian and sort things out aunty”, he said. He then walked back into our house laughing like there was no tomorrow. That presented quite an emotional dilemma for me, on the one side I was sad that she thought I was North Indian and on the other, I was happy that the blame was aimed at the North Indians and not actually at the Kannadigas.
There were times when our wonderful neighbours would call the owner of our flat to complain about noise, even when the flat was empty. It was quite clear that they wanted us out. They were a family and they wanted a family next to them rather than four bachelors who have a life. It got even worse when my girlfriend decided to stay over a few days.
“How dare you bring girls here? You think this is a dance bar?” the husband screamed. My roommates and I had by this point developed a general sense of nonchalance towards them. They would scream, we would stand still listening. We would even draw straws and the one with the shortest had to listen to them crib, scream and whine that night.
“I will prove that you get women to your house”, the wife proclaimed. We had never denied it by the way. She then started doing something that was so unexpected. She would walk out of her house and check the footwear outside our house. She even took pictures of the footwear, in a desperate attempt to prove the existence of her… my girlfriend was her Bigfoot! Again, I’m reiterating, I never denied that she was there.
“We will not move out of this place, we will stand tall and face them. If we just give up and leave they win. We should not let them win, we should make sure that we change them or at least make it a living hell for them. Moving out of this house is not an option!” my roommate gloriously said, like Shahrukh Khan giving his ‘sattar minute’ speech in Chak De!
Two months after that we all moved out. I still think of them sometimes. Just knowing that there is a lady out there with pictures of chappals on her phone. There is man out there who believes that he can control when other people sleep. The fact that they both have found each other makes me believe in the existence of soul mates. I still picture them with stethoscopes listening in on the conversations of their neighbours, waiting for the opportune moment to attack, devour and destroy.
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