Living in apartments can be voyeuristic. You know when someone on a floor above, or below, is having a fight, as rudely banged doors and offensive insults float through the windows — though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where those sounds are emerging from, so you can never tell with certainty whether it was Sarla, or Padma, who called her mother-in-law that. In most city block, there are few secrets — and you can bet your last rupee that those few soon become known through carelessly whispered conversations.
Sometimes, angry noises are replaced by cheerful party clatter, so you know the acquaintances you nod to in the lift aren’t yet ready to include you in their circle of friends — and, damn, they seem to be having so much fun. There was the time when my wife was not talking to Sarla, and so decided against calling her for dinner when we had a few other friends over. In deference to a future when they might be friends again, she shut the windows and drew the blinds so her ex-best friend would not know about our nocturnal celebrations — alas, betrayed, when the smokers in the group opened the windows to let in fresh air, and let the cat out of the bag. (The next night, Sarla had a party in full view of our apartment; needless to say, we weren’t invited.)
We’ve had our share of creeps and wife-beaters and abusers, all grist to the mill of large city living, where those who shout into their mobile phones can be heard several flats away as they rail about stock markets, harangue colleagues about their incompetence, or simply share gossip with little sense of discretion. Sometimes, though, it’s easy to slip into shouting mode.
Recently, having chosen to work from home, I found myself on the phone attempting a conversation with an old, somewhat irascible artist, who seemed disinclined to talk about the nature of figures he painted — both of us shouting a little more than was strictly necessary into the phone. Could he tell me about the anguished nature of the people in his paintings? He mumbled something incoherent. “But they’re all nude,” by now I was screaming, sitting close to the living room window, “why is everyone naked?” I’m not sure what the artist said in explanation, for when I lifted my head, it was to find I had attracted an audience of fascinated neighbours peering over balconies and out of windows at a person who, they would warn their families, appeared to be a purveyor of filth and porn.
Still, I suppose, that’s nothing to what happened in those long-ago, pre-liberalisation days when “trunk calls” still needed to be booked and telephone connections were, at best, erratic. Having received a call in office from an editor in Hong Kong whom I did not know, but who required some clarification on a piece I’d written, as soon as we’d got the business out of the way, he asked – probably because the phone lines had changed the quality of my voice – why a woman (his erroneous supposition) had a man’s name. “But I am a man,” I shouted into the phone at the reception desk, repeating my plaintive squeak several times to his “What?”, only to look up to find the rest of the office gazing in anticipation of more histrionic revelations. Terrible, really, the way some people don’t respect privacy and listen in to conversations.