I inhabit a two-room apartment in the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi. My balcony offers a view that looks out mostly onto a lush-green canopy. As an ardent votary of the minimalist lifestyle, I have sparsely furnished my space and everything is pretty much where it needs to be. But still, there are days when the space feels constricted — perhaps not in the physical realm but in an emotional state of being.
Often, I juxtapose this flat against my parental home with long, spacious verandahs and lawns that need to be mowed by the gardener every two weeks. The kind of lawn that collects dry leaves during winter and makes way for bamboo chairs to soak in the sunshine over endless cups of cardamom-scented chai and neighbourhood gupshup.
Here, the silence is deafening. It’s not repressive, just omnipresent. When in meditative tranquil, I often hear my neighbours through the walls — sounds of a chair being dragged, utensils being washed or the faint strains of a sitar. But I am sure I would fail to put a name on their faces if I ever encountered them in the corridor outside. We exist a few feet apart, but we are all confined behind our triple-locked doors and routines that seldom overlap.
I wonder if it’s the megapolis or just the way life silently metamorphoses as time winds its way through the cosmic clock? The tangibility of childhood, of neighbours remembering your birthdays, of people waving from their gates as one left for the bus stop, now seems irretrievable from the distant past, like a language I once knew but have now forgotten how to speak.
I imagined it would be different when I first moved in. A prestigious job, a new city and the quiet pride of being handed your own set of keys. Soon, I realised that living beside someone doesn’t necessarily translate into actually knowing them. We walk past each other hurriedly in the corridor as we walk to and fro from the elevator without an acknowledgement or a polite half-smile at best.
On some days, I catch the pungent smell of hilsa frying or hear an infant’s symphony from a neighbouring flat, and I feel oddly comforted. These signs of human existence are invisible yet steady. These sounds reassure me that others are here too, breathing in their own private silence. We are detached, but not alone. Truth be told, I don’t miss the bungalow. However, what I do terribly miss is the space between people that used to feel so much closer. Back then, a gate was something people opened without hesitation. Now, the apartment door stays shut unless there’s a reason to knock.
Still, there are small moments that accidentally connect us like a parcel mistakenly dropped at my doorstep or my neighbours’ fuchsia-pink bougainvillea that unabashedly creeps into and brightens my balcony. We may not speak, but we sense each other like silent witnesses to parallel lives. This apartment doesn’t hold the same kind of memories as the house I left behind. Perhaps, it doesn’t need to. It’s a different time and space. A different kind of life. And while I may not know who my neighbours are, I know that they are there just beyond the shared wall, living as quietly as I am. Sometimes, that’s enough.
The writer is a 2017-batch officer of the Indian Economic Service