In my life so far, I have had mostly excellent neighbours.

6 min read.

After the completion of my studies and then the pupillage in London, I moved to West Africa. Thereafter I practised law in South Asia, and finally returned to the United Kingdom. All these years, I have lived in several houses/flats, some official and some owned by me. I believe that if your next-door person, whom you run into casually in the morning, in the evening and more often at the week- ends, is not neighbourly, your life would be miserable. Some years ago, our neighbour on the right, a widower, moved to the nursing home and the house was let to two men in their thirties. Whenever my wife strolled into our back garden, their huge dog would bark furiously at her and tried to jump the five-foot fence. Strangely, if I happened to be in the garden, the dog would wag his tail to convey submission and excitement. Probably, he was misogynist.

 When I complained to the new occupants of the house, it went in one ear and out the other. We cheered when after a few months the house was bought by our present neighbours, and they moved in. They are wonderful people.

In South Asian city, I lived in a detached house with my wife and two children. During our memorable stay there, a few interesting incidents happened, and I share just two with the readers.

On our left the house was rented to an officer working for a quango. He with his family lived on the ground floor, while the first-floor apartment was let to a young woman.

In our house, we had a big lawn in the front with flower beds on the sides. There were papaya trees on one side of the drive next to the six-foot-high common wall. Instead of jogging out in the streets or driving to a park, I would do it in our own lawn.

 The High Court hours were 8 am to 1.30 pm. On my way back, I would pick up the children from their different schools. In the late afternoon, the wife would take our son to the school for games. Normally, the lawyers go to their chambers in the evening, see the clients, and prepare the cases fixed for hearing the next day. They return home at about nine or ten pm.

I would do the 40-minute running in the late afternoon when it was slightly cooler. I used to do it when I was in West Africa. I would run in an idyllic setting at the bottom of the hills.

In my lawn, I jogged anti-clockwise. It was my diurnal occurrence.

In the first-floor apartment on our left, a new renter, a young woman, had checked in.

One afternoon, while jogging, I saw her briefly from a certain angle standing near the railings. She appeared to be enjoying mild breeze and the sight of the guava orchard. She looked at me and unexpectedly gave a broad smile, which I could see from a distance.

 I do not think it was my fault. If a woman looks at a man with a smile, it is incumbent on the recipient to respond impromptu. 

My instinct commanded me to wave her in return.

The young woman turned out to be slender, graceful, and quite pretty. Awesomesauce!

 As my jogging routine was set in stone. Every day she waved and gave me a smile. In return, I would raise my arm. I was in my late thirties and the woman looked in mid-twenties. Furthermore, as I had too much on my plate right then, I could not imagine in my wildest dreams that a young and beautiful woman would develop her fervid feelings towards me. I rejected the possibility of any loving advances by her as namby-pamby nonsense. I did not belong to her ilk. Though, I am not an angel, but I thought that I would be making an idiot of me if I encouraged the affair d’amour. But as the time passed, quite unwittingly, I reciprocated her gestures without realising any ramifications. 

 Things were moving apace.

I had growing consternation. I thought of different options, including the one that instead of jogging in our lawn, I should drive to the park. But to do it at home was very convenient. I hummed and hawed.

 Eventually, I found the easiest way to truncate the phony matter. Guess, what I did?

 The answer is at the end of the second story.

The families on our right and on the ground floor on our left were extremely nice. Not only they, the rest of the neighbours in the street were quite good as well. There were no houses in the front but a guava orchard.

In our backyard we had servant quarters, in which our woman cook and her grown up son lived. We shared the eight- foot- high back wall with the rear garden of another house. I had heard adverse gossips from the neighbourhood about the occupant of that house but never met him.

One Sunday afternoon, our gate bell rang, and I walked to meet the visitor. Without asking me, he entered through the mini door of the metal gate and addressing me by my first name, informed me that he was the owner of the house in our back. He grumbled:

“I’ve a serious complaint against your young servant. He stands on a stool on your side of the back wall and tries to allure my young female servant. He should stop it.”

He was a man in his late forties with hard boiled egghead, fatty, and of medium height. I did not appreciate the complaint nor the manner of its reporting. The truth is that I am a cool-minded person, but I must admit that my response to the visitor was to some extent disproportionate. I said fumingly:

“Firstly, you must’ve read my nameplate fixed on the gate’s left pillar. It shows that I’ve a title of doctor. You should have addressed me by using the title.

“Secondly, If I were you, instead of the route you followed to come to me i.e., getting out of your house, trekking to the end of the street, turning right and then again right, and walking down to my house, I should have turned left at the end of your street, and would have reached the Police Station sooner than the time you wasted to come to me to lodge the frivolous complaint.   The boy is grown-up and I presume so is your female servant, and it is prudent not to poke my nose in their affairs, and so should you. This is my candid advice.

“Finally, I’m lucky I share my back wall with you. Had you been my neighbour on the right or left, I would have sold the house and moved elsewhere.”

He shook his head in disgust and stalked off mutteringly.

We lived in that house for a few years thereafter, but never heard of him, nor received any complaint about any matter.

Coming back to the dilemma I had about the young woman who lived on the first floor of the house on our left, the answer is:

I lifted the weight from my chest when instead of jogging anti-clockwise, I started clockwise. Thereafter, I scarcely saw her smiling and waving.

 I had real rush of relief when a few months later she moved out of the rented accommodation.

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