Cyrus Broacha knows how to avoid neighbours while behaving perfectly neighbourly

As you all know, this column isn’t written in a hurry. I try not to write more than 15 words a day, which, after a small check, become more like 12.

Science, that I have never read, has clearly proven that we humans can’t manage more than two clear thoughts per day. Hence, every day after “Go to the bathroom”, and, “Brush your teeth”, I am left stranded. The same applies to writing. After two or three clear thoughts, one tends to go bone dry. Hey, and it is not just me. It happens to far more powerful people too — Joe Biden springs to mind. Although, come to think of it, I haven’t read any of his writing.

Over the past week, I spent days, ok hours, er... minutes, actually less than a minute, honing potential topics for this week’s column. I finally narrowed this down to three: (1) Maui fires and the response of federal machinery to it. (2) Indian cricket’s search for a No.4. (3) And the relevance of Rakhi Sawant as a panellist on 9pm news channel programmes.

I know, dear reader, that you love all three of these topics and choosing one over the other would be like Sophie’s choice, and so I almost in my zeal, started writing three columns simultaneously. I know what you are thinking, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. However, three columns per day, in the building of Rome? Easy-peasy. (From the early Italian Easio Peasio).

But then just then, er... don’t ask me exactly when was just then, as all I can clearly recall was just then, I bumped into a building neighbour. The old adage, and I quote from the code of Hammurabi directly, “You can’t choose your building neighbours, though you can stop new ones from coming, if you try real hard”. I tell you that Hammurabi, or Hamu Uncle, was ahead of his time. Other popular works of Hammurabi include “Girls over 18”, and “why I shave my legs”. So, you see he had a grasp over a wide range of subjects.

Anyhow, back to my tryst with neighbour culture. At the time I was opening the lift’s door, when my phone fell on the floor. This happened because I was primarily holding on to my phone with my chin, or rather my second chin, against my chest.

I have no idea why I carried the phone like this because both my hands were free at the time. Anyway, the phone slipped off from under my chin and fell onto the floor. Now, normally like all 50-year-olds, I’d use my foot to pick it up. However, since a couple of passers-by were looking at me, I used both feet instead. Sadly, the phone slipped out from my ‘feet clasp’, and I was forced to go all medieval, and use my hands.

As I bent to pick up the phone the old-fashioned way, I saw a neighbour approaching the building lobby. I immediately started perspiring profusely. Panic engulfed me. C’mon it happens to all of us. Even my minute, pea-sized brain could sense the potential problem, the hazardous risk, the danger zone I was plunging into.

You see, if I made a clean phone pick-up, avoided eye contact, and rushed into the lift, I could, maybe, make the lift ride alone. Then I enjoyed a modern-day miracle, made a clean pick, closed one lift door, almost closed the other, when an elderly female voice said “Roko”. It was like an arrow through the heart.

“Roko”, for those who are not aware, is a Sanskrit phrase which translates into, “You better hold that lift for me, or I’ll hit you repeatedly on your head with my high-heeled shoes”.

So, there you have it people. There is your topic for the day. “How to avoid your neighbour, while behaving perfectly neighbourly”? Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer, yet, if I get you to take up the question, then quite frankly, my job is done. Thankfully, thus, so is this column… er… for now.

The writer has dedicated his life to communism. Though only on weekends.