Few would admit it, but we seldom view our neighbours favourably. Instead we tend to categorise them rather harshly: they are either troublesome or unlikeable. Indeed few remain on good terms with their neighbours for long. The very nearness of their homes somehow sours their relationship and keeps them at loggerheads.
Humans, of course, are as gregarious as sheep – though never as meek! The tradition of living together is age-old and so are the problems it raises. Staying in close proximity does create friction unavoidably. For instance I know that the frequent intrusions of a neighbour’s dog or cat are a source of irritation to many in my locality. Then some neighbours are so touchy that turning up the volume of one’s music system a little has them up in arms. Miffed, you mull suggesting they have their homes soundproofed!
These days, to be a likeable neighbour, one has to be truly tolerant and accommodating, turning a blind eye to many vexations. Indeed, good neighbourliness is a two-way route that needs to be assiduously cultivated. Among other things, it includes lending your neighbour a bowl of sugar and forgetting all about it, admiring his amateurish paintings although they’re no better than a child’s doodles, petting his foul-mouthed parrot though you’d love to wring its neck, not letting your dog bark the neighbourhood awake at night, ensuring your cat doesn’t raid your neighbour’s kitchen, letting his dog fertilise your lawn or hose down your prized dahlias without raising a hue and cry about it or – however tempting it might be – not eavesdropping when the couple next door are bickering hammer and tongs. In fact, there are scores of such triggers that can snowball into a confrontation between neighbours if restraint is not exercised.
Admittedly, some neighbours do test the limits of one’s patience. A few are prone to prying, usually through domestic servants, and thus get to know more about your family matters than you would consider desirable. Some nettle you by honing their musical or singing skills late into the night when, of course, they’re assured of a ‘captive’ audience who willy-nilly have to stay tuned in! Or sometimes a thoughtless neighbour in the flat above may inopportunely dust off one of her doormats just as you emerge from below – leaving you not exactly confetti-covered and starry-eyed! It’s the perverse and diabolic timing of the act that’s most galling.
So who’s the bigger nuisance, your neighbours or you? We need to remember that our neighbours will probably judge us by an even harsher yardstick than the one we use for them. Perhaps we conveniently forget that we, too, are neighbours to others whom we inconvenience knowingly or unknowingly. Maybe, rather than trying to reform our neighbours, we need to reform ourselves into better and more tolerant neighbours. For as George Bernard Shaw sagaciously opined, “The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.”
And G K Chesterton did have a point when he shrewdly observed, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people.”
gnettomunnar@rediffmail.com