Thy neighbour's voice

With a pinch of salt

BY SANJAY Kapoor

ON a cold wintry morning, a strong smell of burning rubber filled my bedroom. Fearing that my house was perhaps on fire, I peered out of the window to find out the source of the pungent smelling black smoke. It wasn't my house from where the smoke was originating but my neighbours'.

A bit relieved that my own house was intact, I started screaming to wake up my neighbour to the clear and present danger. Realizing that he had not heard me - his doors and windows were locked to keep the wintry winds away - my wife and I rushed to his house and pounded at his door.

A little later, my neighbour, oblivious to the smoke and fire and the general commotion created by us in the neighbourhood, groggily got up and asked us in apparent disbelief, " Is my house really on fire? I heard you guy scream, but I did not take you seriously."

A bit taken aback by his manifest cynicism for our good neighbourly warnings, we forced him and family to come out of their smoke filled house.

The incident provided us an important understanding of how our neighbours perceive us - they do not take us seriously even when their house was literally burning.

I began to wonder, why my seemingly nice neighbour did not like me. Was there something wrong about my behaviour that upsets him? Or was there some other reason? Was he envious of me and my house? I think maybe it is bigger by a few hundred square feet. Is my wife prettier than my neighbours or are my children doing better than his? Difficult questions, as what one covets differs with each person's preference and perversions.

Short commercial

I did not get ready answers from this episode, till I saw the commercial that surfaced after many years on Indian television networks. This short, but effective, commercial of a television company shows a devil with horns provoking a person to do what the neighbour is doing.

"Your neighbour has got a new house", the devil breathes in the ear of the nattily dressed young man. Finding little reaction from him, the devil needles him further, " your neighbour has got married again".

The nonplussed young man replies again, " So what". The devil is ready with his repartee: "then why did you buy a TV after your neighbour bought one?".

The message from the ad campaign was mischievously apparent: its envy for the neighbour that determines many of our lives choices and reactions. This is also the animal spirit that drives capitalism.

Neighbour dynamics

What is also remarkable about neighbourhood dynamics is that the members of such a community may be envious and even fearful of each other's size but they hate to be subservient to each other.

The neighbourhood always allows possibilities of small and middle households to gang up against the big one. It maintains a balance where the big neighbours do not flaunt their wealth or influence.

A big businessman and a political fixer, who stays in a nearby posh colony of South Delhi, learnt this lesson the hard way recently. Used to having his way by employing his considerable wealth and muscle power elsewhere, this moneybag began to enlarge his living space by encroaching into public land.

The neighbours were aware of his amoral ways and were ready. As soon as he started baring his nefarious agenda, the neighbours began their protest.

Newspapers and TV channels were informed. Some residents also went to the court. Thick skinned that the fixer may be, he had not thought that his immediate neighbours would pose such a challenge to his power.

He realized quite soon that taking them on could become a reason for these people-read media-- to delve in his unsavoury past and all his crooked deals that made him such a powerful man.

The political wheeler-dealer beat a hasty retreat from his aggressive ways and chose to smoke the peace pipe with his angry neighbours. Last heard, the bully had become a lamb and had become a model of good behaviour.

He is now one who funds the neighbourhood fairs and is the first one to volunteer whenever the community needs him.

'Pinch of salt'

In many ways, countries behave similarly. Small nations fear and envy their big neighbours. The advise of the big neighbours is invariably taken with a pinch of salt.

It is seen as contrary to their national interest- some thing that could undermine their sovereignty. Big country, like a big neighbour, too, has its own misgivings.

They feel that the small countries are ganging up against it at the behest of another powerful country, which has an interest in their region.

Due to all these reasons, neighbour's distrust for each other becomes quite explicit. So, in South Asian context, India does not want to play the honest broker in Nepal or Sri Lanka as it apprehends a deep-seated conspiracy to trap them in a crisis.

It remembers with disgust their messy intervention at the behest of the then President Junius Jayawardene. She fears that Pakistan would benefit if it gets mired in these two countries. Even within Nepal and Sri Lanka, there is palpable angst in the intelligentsia against India.

In all this jingoistic debate where different communities take diametrically opposite positions, little space has been given to the interest of the man on the street. Does he benefit or suffer in power play of big and small neighbours?

The Maoist insurrection in Nepal, the insurgency in India's northeast, recent happenings in Pakistan's Balochistan and protracted ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, only highlight the misery of the common man.

Is it possible to take a non-statist view on these problems and forge a common minimum program that safeguards the interest of the common man? For long, these conflicts have become a reason for the ruling elite to explain away bad governance and corruption.

Thy neighbour would lend his voice - take it with a pinch of salt if you want to- in the subsequent issues of this weekly column, to those forces that are trying to bring peace to this tragedy scarred region.

(Sanjay Kapoor is the Editor of Hardnews India. He is a former Asiaweek correspondent)