Sunday Story: My Neighbourly Experience

This is the story of my neighbour who is stays in the building adjoining mine, our two buildings being separated by a common wall. The buildings are thus mirror images of one another.  He is the landlord as well, so there are many occasions we have to interact, particularly for any repair or waterproofing work, where work done by any one  affects the other. 

He is a decent man but I enjoy interacting with him for a particular reason. He is what may be called as the archetype SoBo snob, and a typical example of old money. We did not share our childhood together as he was earlier staying with his parents at Chowpatty, in a huge sea facing house. After his ageing aunt, a noble lady, who was staying here passed away, he moved in here with his wife as a newly married couple in late 1990s. He belongs to the well-known K M Munshi family from the maternal side, who founded the Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan at Chowpatty. The family is well connected and influential. Had once spotted our former RBI governor, Bimal Jalan, on their terrace on Makar Sankrant day while we were flying kites.

His SoBo roots are evident in everything about him. He once told me in his typical anglicized accent, 'You see, I don't travel beyond Worli'. So places like Bhayandar and Dombivli are completely unknown to him and cannot picture him ever travelling by train. Talking of his accent and pronunciations, it is an unlearning for us. So for 'Hughes Road', he does not say what everyone says as 'Hue-jhes Road', but pronounced correctly as 'Hues Road'. So also for 'plumber', he pronounces it the British way as 'pluh-muh', where 'b' is silent, not as generally people say, 'pluhm-buhr'. Initially I thought he was making a mistake, but he used it repeatedly, making me check, and yes he was right. 

I wondered what school he went to and as I almost guessed it, it was Campion, class of 1984. His wife is a sweet, elegant lady, very pleasant and always smiling. If I would notice one more thing, it is her girlish mannerisms, which are sort of quite cute. Her mother taught at Queen Mary school, and in fact my wife and my sisters were her students. He is a Gujarati and his wife a Parsi, and they make a very handsome, good looking couple, with a certain chic and sophistication. She works in an Airlines, and he until 2011 was with Edelweiss holding a key position in their Arbitrage agorithm development team but now over a decade he is doing independent arbitrage in the F&O market (whatever that means). He says he looks at investments as retirement wealth and is trying to taper of risk factors.

This year when the BMC was doing their pre-monsoon tree trimming exercise, they skipped chopping off the branches grazing our two buildings, as both of us were not there. He was pretty concerned as some branches were actually coming inside his balcony. He called me and I suggested we write a letter and go the BMC's Garden department. I cannot forget that visit, remembering how completely out of place he was there. The office was a small, independent shanty type building, with a musty smell and garden equipment all over the place. There were heaps of files and papers gathering dust. The garden officer was not there but a cat was perched on his table. He looked around, shocked and in disgust, as he had never seen or imagined anything like this. I spoke to the junior officer and sorted our matter, but he had another issue where he needed a compound tree to be trimmed as it was causing nuisance. In all seriousness he spoke to that lady in broken Marathi but with his strong  British-English accent. It was extremely funny to hear it, and even the lady officer from her expesssion was highly amused trying hard to supress a smile. On top of it there were few other people witnessing all this, who were equally amused. I came to his rescue and explained the problem to that lady in Marathi. 

You would well imagine that being a class SoBoite, he is quite disdainful of people not coming up to his standard. So one his tenants is a Marwari family, rich but lacking class. He just cannot come to terms and digest their crude behavior, their language and tastes. I remember the Marwari lady when they first came here used to wear a very low saree and her pallu was hardly ever in place, which generously exposed her midriff. There was a particular time she used to go out in the morning, walking in her un-womanly style, attracting a lot of attention including that of an opposite building neighbour who planted himself in the balcony at that time. Their son, Pradhyuman, was part of Netflix's 'Indian Matchmaking' series, whose marriage incidentally flopped, of all reasons, wife abuse. 

On the other hand, compared to his boorish tenant, he has often praised us on how tastefully we do our Ganapati decorations. His objections to the Marwari family and the way he expresses them are unintentionally quite hilarious.  A few times just for some fun I have even provoked him just to hear him unleash his tirade in chaste English, almost as Tharoor would!

I often wonder how a city like Mumbai is such a vibrant cultural mix, from people like him who cannot come down from the ivory towers they live in, to the sons of the soil people with their hearty, colourful language, who represent the heart of Mumbai. In a way we should be  thankful for our school, that has taught us to be comfortable and at home with all types of people and sections of society.