Opinion Who’s my neighbour | From village streets to Delhi flats: I am a citizen without a neighbourhood

If I ask myself why this is so, one of the answers would be the lack of people in my life who I associate with the city. The majority of those I met here, and gelled with, were migrants themselves and trying to find a corner of the city, both physically and figuratively, that they could call their own. We all carried our own hometowns in an invisible backpack, our neighbourhood. 

The Spanish word for neighbour, “vecino,” also means citizen, and I find it apt. Because, to my mind, the sense of belonging to a village/city, and at a larger level to a state or country, is generated through a community, where you find yourself and can also lose yourself, if need be.

Therefore, I continue to be a citizen, or at least an ex-citizen of Kesla, a small village in Madhya Pradesh, or more accurately, Bhumkapura, an even smaller hamlet within that panchayat. There, I could both be nondescript and someone significant, at will. The first few years of my life were literally spent on the street, as our tiny one-room kholi had nothing to offer except a meal or two and a chatai or mattress at night, while the world outside was full of joy and adventure. A circle of about six Adivasi houses with a handpump in the middle was my world. This was community parenting without being labelled so. I probably had more meals at my neighbours’ houses than at my own.

As we moved into a house of our own, with more space and books, a new addictive addition to my life, I continued to spend my afternoons and evenings outside. There was always someone around to talk, play, explore and pass the time with. I knew their quirks, and they mine, and even if sometimes we did things to annoy each other, the correct levers could be pulled to ensure that the engine of rural life continued to run smoothly.

They watched me ride my first bicycle, break my voice, and grow the hints of a moustache ahead of time. And then education beckoned, and I was packed off to a distant conservative qasba (small-town), where the neighbours were not just strangers but also custodians of culture and decorum, and suddenly my bedroom became the sanctuary instead of the street. Now I lived with ageing grandparents, and in a town that had seen large-scale migration. Thus, companionship shifted to school, while the neighbourhood remained a barren refuge, the four walls of the house becoming a stark frontier: A border, if you will.

Later, a fully residential, thriving and socio-politically active campus meant that my college/hostel years were a happy blur. However, the camaraderie that defined campus life and turned the common spaces into a comforting environment slowly started receding as people became serious about their careers, began moving out, and the cacophony of a society in flux also invaded the space.

Soon, I was in Lajpat Nagar, a tenant with no face, who had latched his girlfriend inside the house in the rush to get to the office on time. When I called my landlord in a panic, asking if he could ask the downstairs neighbour to open the door (no keys required!), his response was tepid. I realised they did not get along, and the animosity extended to the faceless tenant. Eventually, the person who came to the rescue was the sanitation worker who came to collect the garbage, heard the girl inside knocking, and opened the door with a smile. A contradiction if there ever was one, because the most transactional neighbourhood relationship became the most natural.

As I switch neighbourhoods with rising rent and changing workplaces, I have found a few neighbours who are polite, and even friendly, but there is no hood. And all of us seem to be conscious of the temporary nature of our familiarity, due to the pressures of the modern metropolis and capitalism, which inhibit us from opening up. As we become vulnerable citizens of the republic, one yearns for neighbours with whom one can share this vulnerability. After all, it is only in the hood that you can be your true self.

I have accepted it now. I am a vecino (citizen/neighbour) of Delhi, but without a vecindad (neighbourhood).

The writer teaches at Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University