The Junked Doorbells

An intimidating squeal at the midst of the night left me awake. The shout was repetitive and via the window mesh of my room I tried to figure out what was going on. I could make out a man’s figure, though blur, shouting uncontrollably with few people trying to get hold of him. I surmised him to be a drunkard, dismissed the matter and slid back into my blanket. Only after few minutes of him being dragged inside did he appear again shouting more profoundly and this time, the words & the figure more clear. “I could see him, he’s a ghost, he’s here, he’s talking to me, he’s not leaving me alone, What do I do’, these were the words landed to my ears while I was discreetly trying to ascertain the matter. Both of my brothers were also awake and one was already struck with fear. The figure on the road still shouting horribly, started marching towards neighbouring gates and thumped them as hard as he could. One gate after the another, ours was no exception. We were tenants dwelling on the first floor of the house so the banging at our entrance didn’t reach clearly to our now wary ears. Ten to fifteen minutes into the dreary scene and finally no voice was heard and no figure appeared thereafter.

‘No figure appeared’ , a constant thought that troubled my mind for a long time after the night got over. Isn’t it bizarre that such a huge ruckus was created inside a colony & there was not a single soul who bothered to come out. Not everybody but people of age are invariably expected to appear and ask. But nobody did. Nobody.

A similar case many years back, took place in my hometown and the whole colony was awake & out. The possessed man threw his family out and they found shelter at our place during that unlucky night hour. All the neighbours collectively handled & dissolved the matter unlike the previous one where not a leaf fluttered by the air of discomfort around them. What is it that has severely changed through these years? Why are we only interested in spacing ourselves from the beings around us? Whom do we call ‘neighbours’ when they all are nothing but ‘strangers’?

Many a times I take a stroll outside in the verandah when I witness the rare occasion of human communication only in the form of tiffs and brawls. They would never extend a helping hand but ever ready to extend a blow of a barb onto each others face. They wouldn’t stop criticizing each other until their throats go dry and energy runs out. You speak of names, I can’t even recognise the faces living next door to me. Only the faint voices would make you believe that the house abutting yours is not an abandoned one. If you ever get lucky to spot these rainbow faces & their unwelcoming eyes meet yours, it’s either they turn blind or you become invisible. The only person I recognise & have a chance to socialize with is a shop vendor ‘bhaiya’ who runs his shop just outside our landlord’s place. In the entire locality, he’s our only neighbour, our go-to person and the only face who doesn’t treat me as an invisible entity.

Being college students we don’t have water purifier installed at our place so we’ve subscribed to a camper facility that drops off two campers everytime we run out of water. They offer such an unreliable service that there are times when we are left without drinking water for days. Then whom do we turn to? No, definitely not our landowners. They don’t ask us, we don’t ask them. That’s how simple our equation is. They would see the empty campers lying downstairs to be picked up but wouldn’t bother to ask if we have water to drink or not. So our only resort is our very own bhaiya who would go to strangers homes, collect water and give it to us. Despite of him being a non-resident of the locality, he’s the only one I'd prefer calling a neighbour. People like him are respite in the phase of calamity, a calamity that’s hugely ignored in today’s popular culture.

Not just me but we all have moved from a world of relations to the world of isolation and how hugely upsetting is it to see the human connect melting and isolation taking over. Cities have failed to survive the intimate climate, villages to this day hold on to. The flying times have robbed us of a family called ‘neighbours’ and no products of ancient times would've ever to thought that there will come a time when only necessity makes you meet your unknown neighbours.