Before our country got fixated on sending opposing but fellow countrymen to our neighbouring country, we all lived and were building our own neighbourhood with admiration, love and respect. Those times we didn’t have the choice to say to our OWN that “Go Away to Pakistan” and hence maybe we were more accomodating, tolerant and also believed in our heart that we are all together to make India, Our neighbourhood, A better place to live. Back then, We were more concerned about our neighbourhood than the neighbouring country.
I remember as children we were often reprimanded by our neighbours and we took it as a way to get better. We grew up as empathetic people and if not understood at first but definitely tried to understand our neighbours point of view. Be it an uncle who didn’t want noise on Sunday afternoon, we changed our playing times. Now as working professionals we understand the value of that Sunday siesta. An aunty who would not give us the cricket ball if it entered her kitchen, so we cut out the square shots and started batting straight. In my post match interview after scoring a century at the Sheffield Shield. I actually thanked Jaya Aunty not Sunil Gavaskar for teaching me to play Straight. Even our parents didn’t mind that we got reprimanded and rarely took it personally. Seldom did our parents interfere or shot back when a grousing neighbor was lamenting about us. They saw us as part of a community beyond the walls of our home. My mother always entertained and thanked the neighbours who did complain (rightly or wrongly). So were behaviour of many other parents and families. Back in those days, Just as my mother would say to our neighbours “Just tell Rajesh and he will understand”. It’s the same maxim we need to follow. “Just tell the neighbours directly (not on the whats app group)” as we all still behave like children and we need to grow up.
In New India, the parent is now the Whats app group and unfortunately as this parent is virtual depending on who is complaining and against whom, the parents have to even listen and feel to object at the same time. Maybe as all are watching and seeing this group. At times this Whats App group becomes parents of more than 10 warring children. Can you imagine the plight of that parent, whose own children are against each other? We live mostly as neighbours in this virtual group. We hardly know each other and where we come from. We have our own ideologies and we firmly so much believe in them that we form biases and judge everyone & anyone. We “virtually” decide on who is on our side and who is opposing and based on this virtual understanding we begin and do our neighbourhood duties. Well anyways we are exercising our rights and actually just forgotten our duties.
As part of some of the Residents group, I have witnessed 3 kinds of behaviour. First, There are few who wait to name call, sham others in the group, Second, there are few who never complain in spite of having reasons to complain and let the rogue element grow in the neighbourhood. Lastly, Then there are some who depending on whose side they are, they either are with or oppose the others or are silent. In my opinion all these 3 kinds of behaviour are wrong and lead us to become bad neighbours and if I might add bad residents and citizens. The ability to laugh on ourselves or capability to make light of a matter is getting extinct. We are losing our sense of humour, our wit and worst is we are carrying forward angst for our neighbours from previous chats/issues.
It’s the peril of our times, When we are judging food by seeing the picture of it on Instagram, on Twitter we are liking messages without reading and understanding them, On Facebook, we are making friends without meeting them and on Whats app group we are admonishing our neighbours without knowing them. It’s not far that such behaviour will at some point lead us to say to our neighbours, now GO away from here and GO in the neighbourhood complex. Knowing how those in power use us, we might have a law on this soon by the name “Neighborhood Jihad” or looking at plight of some of the other sections of our society (gender, religion, sexual preference) who do not get accomodation in certain complexes, we might not need a law for the same. It will be unwritten, unseen rule which are not spoken.
The idea of India is manifestation of our neighbourhoods. Our neighbourhoods fueled by resident whats app group are getting filled with contempt, prejudice, dislike and slowly moving towards hatred. This doesnt augur well for our future and we need to build our neighbourhood beyond realms of a “Resident Whats app” group. We have to know and interact with our neighbours like before. I write this on the next day when the 4G ban was lifted in J&K. I asked a friend from Kashmir how was life without internet in J&K. He said it was great as people met and spend time with each other rather than online. They got to know and understood each other more. Maybe its an idea worth exploring to ban Internet in a resident complex on 1 day so that neighbours “know” more good about each other and “comment” less bad about each other.
P.S. Excerpt from a chapter I wrote on hopefully soon to be published book “Inhabitants of the LaLa Land”: How Indians have gone astray & Ideas to bring them back on the right path.