LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR

So says the Bible and so says Joan—the living embodiment of ‘Gandhigiri’ (as one of my friends suggested) in Poland. And so far, touchwood, things have worked out fine.

You see, we live in a building which belongs to the University and those who live here are mostly Visiting Professors from around the globe. There are, of course, a few Polish Ph.D students who happen to make all the noise as students all over the world are wont to do, away from the building—during weekends, at pubs in Piotrkowska Street.

Speaking of noise, here’s how we got introduced to the first neighbour we came to know. Apart from a couple of perfunctory ‘hello’s to people we came across in the elevator, we had no clue until two weeks ago about who our neighbours are. Our first taste of this came on a Sunday morning two weeks back. It was eight o’ clock then and we had just been awakened by a phone call from India. Darby, not quite graceful at any time of the day or night, literally ‘thop-thops’ his way to get the mobile and innocently awakens our neighbour in the floor below. A fifteen-minute interlude follows (not a musical one, I assure you) during which Darby continues being loud, Joan gets all housewife-ish, washing utensils with all the determination of a first-timer and a typical Sunday morning starts taking shape. The interlude over, up comes the neighbour, rings the bell and the moment the door opens begins in a sharp Brit accent, ‘What kind of a fucking noise is that? You are making such a fucking lot of noise…the noise you make is so fucking…fucking…fucking…fucking…’ You are right sweeties—after his three-and-a-half minute impassioned extempore, the f-word was the only one that reverberated. Very typically, Joan gets scared of abusive Englishman who has, by the way, not yet looked up. Very dramatic man, Joan thinks, his posture a flawless copy of some intense, brooding, hungover hero in a tragedy. Darby, very bravely manages to embarrass our tragic hero by reminding him we are neighbours, so could we please at least introduce ourselves. The three manage to relax a little, with Darby asking tragic hero to please come in and Joan offering him a cup of tea. Now, you offer tea to an Englishman and he is sold. It is like flattering a woman. No Englishman can resist a woman’s offer of a good cup of tea. So, good ol’ Gandhigiri with a cup of tea thrown in manages to salvage what might otherwise have led to violence. Joan, shameless as she is, manages to embarrass our hero even more by being all coy and letting him know, his words had almost brought tears to her eyes, and ta-da, before the Indian couple can sigh in relief at the tragic hero’s profuse apologies, they are invited to a wine-party at the Englishman’s the following Wednesday! Joan is relieved, no doubt, but doesn’t quite take to the hero until the party has been attended and keeps referring to him as ‘Dicklickson’, a perverse distortion of his surname—a la ‘Titspervert’ in ‘Bridget Jones Diary’.

Since then, Joan has come to dig our tragic hero quite a lot. He really is rather cute with the bluest eyes she has seen in any man. Turns out that tragic hero had really been a bit hungover, which is why the outburst and which is why he could not even recall whose party he had been to on Saturday evening. Tragic hero is really a very sharp man, extremely witty and a creative writer too. Is currently authoring a screenplay for some English movie to be made in Poland. That puts Joan in quite a spot. She has a thing for all creative writers and solemnly promises to be as quite as possible when she is at home. You can imagine, can’t you, what the jealous Darby’s take on all this will be…ahem…I better get going!