Kishore Singh: Neighbourhood sting

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Sohaib Ilyasi of the sting fame would be proud of our condominium complex, not least because he had a brief flirtation with staying here as well.

For, a few weeks ago, we had the dubious distinction of adding cameras at our entry/ exit gates that feed us with uninterrupted views of those coming in or going out 24x7 on our television screens.

Within days, the excitement, however, had fizzled "" or so I thought "" what with the focus on the chowkidars as they stood self-consciously at attention and tried (in vain) to refrain from digging their noses.

What nobody had reckoned with was the astonishing TRPs our own reality channel soon developed. "Coming for a walk?" Sarla rang to ask my wife.

"I've already been down with Padma," lied my wife as she lay curled up in bed. "Oh," said Sarla, "I saw Padma walking alone on the camera, but maybe you were hiding in the shadows...."

Knowing she'd been caught out, my wife said, "I'm sorry, it's just that I'm tired because my husband came back late from work last night, and so by the time the household wound up, it was midnight."

"Really," said Sarla, "that's strange because I could see both of you going out all dressed up and in your car. And now if you will excuse me, I think I will go for my walk alone."

It wasn't just Sarla. Rajni called to say she thought there was something funny about her neighbour because she could see him going out several times to talk to somebody in a car parked on the road across from the gate. "He must be a spy!" she gasped, though what secrets our little residential colony could have was beyond me.

But secrets it seemed there were aplenty. Teenagers who held hands were reported to their parents and romance swiftly squashed. The drivers and maids who flirted downstairs now stayed furtively out of range of the cameras.

And the gentleman on the fifth floor who was caught driving home every day on film a good hour before he actually arrived at his own doorstep walked in one day to find his wife packing to leave.

No more were the auntiejis and unclejis of our society governed by the saas-bahu sagas on television "" here was real life drama instead.

"Those Awasthis are such freeloaders," said one retired couple sitting before their television screen, "they accept every invitation and are out for dinner every night."

"I think we ought to go out for dinner ourselves," said the wife, "or else people will think we're unpopular and nobody invites us."

All manner of gossip soon filtered in. Priya had told her husband she was at home the whole day when in reality she'd gone for a kitty party.

Her son, who did stay home that day because he said he'd missed his school bus, was soon caught out in his white lie.

The noseyparker on the second floor told Mrs Sharma that Mr Sharma had bunked his morning yoga schedule in the garden because she'd seen him on her television screen, slipping out of the gate to get himself a cigarette instead.

Scandals followed. Mrs Gupta, it appeared, had worn the same saree two days in a row. Young Karan, who flexed his muscles and pulled in his stomach every time he walked past the cameras, was reputedly in love with his own image "" or was he impressing the old ladies watching him on their screens?

Sarla herself came to grief when the camera showed her going out for a film instead of helping Padma cook for her party, as she'd promised before claiming she was laid up with fever. Clearly, sting operations have come to roost.