AFTER spending 60-plus years in individual houses in non-gated colonies, my wife and I shifted to Bengaluru post-retirement to live in a condominium with our son five years ago. Before that, we had spent almost 40 years in a district town of Haryana and the remaining in Punjab’s most happening city of Patiala. Before my parents built a separate house in Patiala in 1974, we lived in our ancestral house there with the families of my father’s three elder brothers. It was a huge house built by my grandad to accommodate the families of his four sons. There were nine adults including my grandfather, a widower. We were 15 cousins. All the adult males in the neighbouring families were chachas or taus and females were either massi (mother’s sister) or bua (father’s sister) depending upon their age and where they came from. A female whose village was near to our mother’s village had to be addressed as a massi and if the neighbour’s village was closer to our ancestral village, she had to be a bua.

 

There were no aunties and uncles. Sharing whatever was cooked in our kitchens with neighbours happened daily. If needed cots and bedding were loaned to accommodate each other’s guests. As kids, we never entered the neighbours’ house from the main door. We jumped over parapets to play with their kids. That was the level of informality. Even after my parents shifted to a new house in 1974, a similar relationship developed with our neighbours effortlessly. The relationships are still going strong. Long after our parents crossed the rainbow bridge and the next generations moved to different cities, the bonds are still strong. When we shifted to Bengaluru. My son and his family were staying in a decent flat they owned. Luckily, my wife and I were able to rent a flat directly opposite theirs. There were four flats on each floor in the tower. We often saw our neighbours outside the lift and also rode in it with them without even sharing a simple hello or a howdy.

 

There were Whatsapp groups that enabled neighbours to communicate unpleasant things to each other that they would consider rude to say face to face. Here, savour one. “Hey neighbour. Your kids keep pacing the floor late at night disturbing my infant son. Tell them to stay in bed in the night”. Smoking can raise tempers 20 floors above you. “Who the hell is smoking? Why am I exposed to passive smoking? What prompted this transition from neighbours sitting around a hookah and chatting in the olden days? Your guess is as bad or good as mine. It was after several months that we began to say hi to neighbours. Another year passed before we stopped during walks for short chats. The brief stop always ended with please do come over sometime for a cup of coffee. After spending five years in condos we now realise that this invitation means nothing at all. It is like an Englishman asking you how do you do? or how’s weather? You just respond: Yeah, sure, without meaning it at all. The moral of the story: there’s many a slip between this cup and the lip!