Since 2012, the only neighbours I have known are my landlords. Landlords, those most dreaded of acquaintances. Like many others, I have often bemoaned this species, willing them to be banished to an exclusive land of their own, from where they can operate their business of exploiting their tenants — if they find any, that is.
I have heard of tenant-landlord relationships in big cities. I am informed that there are papers to be signed by both parties after which a property is let out. In smaller places, like the one where I come from and the places where I have worked, especially in cases of one- or two-room tenements where a professional, especially one in a transferable job and a government one at that, can stay, such accommodation is easier to move into, if not easier to find. No paperwork is involved and the shondhaan — search — occurs through a chain of acquaintances. It usually happens that the landlord turns out to be a relative of a person who works in the same office as the person looking for a house.
I suppose it is a perk of living in a small place. Everything operates on word of mouth. However, this arrangement comes with its own riders. These usually have to do with what time the front gate will be locked at night, how many times and for how long the water pump will be switched on in a day and what food can be cooked in the house, etc.
Since my days in Pakur to my current life in Chandil, it has become a ritual to call my landlord at 08.30 pm sharp and tell him to keep the front gate open as I’ll be home late. Work in a government health centre in a small town extends well beyond the 9-5 routine but there is something about landlords and that magic hour between 8.30 and 9 pm that makes them rush to bolt their front gates. There have been instances when I forgot to inform my landlord and paid the price for it. On one occasion in Chandil, after repeatedly banging on the gate and trying to reach my landlord over the phone, I got my staff from the health centre to climb the wall to open the front gate. When I finally entered and knocked on the door of the house — yes, there is two-tier security — to bring Kaku, my landlord, out, he nonchalantly remarked, “Oho! Daktar babu. Aapni (Oh! Doctor, it’s you)?” and retired to his floor.
I was furious but how do you fight with someone not interested?
Later, Kaku would tell me why he insists on a deadline: “Daktar babu, din-kaal bhalaw chawlchhe naay (Doctor, the times are bad).”
I couldn’t bring myself to argue.
Why then, do I say that my landlords are the only neighbours I have known?
It was only in 2012, when I was 28-going-on-29, that I learnt some duniyadari. As a doctor, I had found a job with the Government of Jharkhand and had to move to Pakur, far away from my hometown, Ghatshila. The very idea of it was upsetting. Before the move, I was a spoilt single child. My parents looked after everything while I studied, torn between decisions no more momentous than whether to follow my parents and become a doctor or write. The idea that a person can be drawn into one’s life simply because he or she happens to live in the vicinity had never occurred to me. I knew our neighbours, but in my family’s self-contained, self-reliant bubble, I never experienced neighbourliness. In our ancestral village, where everyone knew everyone else, it was easier to believe in this idea of a larger community. My parents and pishi became different people there. But in the township of Moubhandar in Ghatshila where I grew up, my life was a perfectly sheltered silo.
The bubble finally burst when I moved to Pakur to begin my life as a salaried professional. The gated aloofness of my parents’ house would not be there. I was to live on my own. I remember my father’s parting words after dropping me at my temporary abode: “Baba, hum log ja rahe hain (Son, we are leaving).”
The new family I found there, that of my landlords, was through my colleague. He found us the 3BHK that would be our shared home for the next four years, till my colleague moved on. I lived in the house for one more year.
Our landlords were an elderly couple, ensconced within a large extended family, who lived in another big house a minute away from our place. Uncle had retired from the steel plant in Bokaro. I had several grouses against both Uncle and Aunty — especially regarding their curfew hours and the fact that whenever they switched on the water pump, they never let the tank fill completely. But these are things I have ceased to remember.
What I remember instead is how Uncle and Aunty accepted us into their fold like family, inviting us for homemade meals on festivals, trusting us with the entire house whenever they travelled. And I especially remember them for that one day in 2017. I had somehow become both a doctor and a writer. My first book of short stories, The Adivasi Will Not Dance, was published in 2015. The reception had given me hope, but suddenly, the ground beneath my feet shifted. That day, protestors had gathered outside the health centre, raising slogans against the book; my effigy was burnt. I was+ deeply shaken. A staff member escorted me home. I locked myself in my room, not knowing what to do. It was afternoon.
That was when Aunty came to look for me. She took me upstairs and made me sit at their dining table, the same place where I had partaken of several festive meals.
“Aap khana khaye hain?” Have you eaten? Aunty asked me. I nodded to say no. She quietly went to the kitchen and brought me food. “Kuch mat sochiye. Aap pahle khana khaiye. (Don’t think of anything. Eat first.)”
Tears escaped my eyes and I couldn’t stop crying. “Hum kuch galat nahi kiye hain, Aunty (I haven’t done anything wrong, Aunty).”
That was all I could say.
“Who is saying that you have done anything wrong? Why are you listening to other people? You eat first. Whatever happens, we will see to it together,” Aunty said.
I ate. Not just the food that Aunty served, but also the reassurance that she showered on me. I absorbed it all. And, in that one moment, I felt that everything would be fine, that there was someone who was looking over me.
I have seen landlords become more than neighbours. My in-the-bubble childhood will never let me connect fully with people; the unexpected love and acceptance that I have received as an adult will not allow me to stay away from people. Perhaps, that is why I will never have neighbours, that in-between place between families and strangers.
I will either have a family or no one at all.
Shekhar is a writer and translator. His latest work is a translation from Hindi to English, I Named My Sister Silence (2023)
