Irksome neighbours

By AES

MY neighbours are not the most decent of people. In fact they are light years away from minimal decency expected from civilised beings. They are definitely one of the most irksome, not to mention bizarre bunch of people on earth. Let me clarify the statement:

Most of my neighbours who are of my age are irksome to the highest magnitude. I am often bemused by their sheer arrogance, spitefulness and ostentatious attitude with juxtaposing dumbness. As there are only a few people different than their bunch in my neighbourhood and me being one, am perceived with great curiosity.

They have the notion that I am an alien or something and its probably due to the fact that, I, unlike them DO NOT wear my trousers above my belly button, use crude, not to mention incomprehensible Bengali slang, pronounce Julius Caesar as Julius 'Kaisar'. You won't hear me listening to Ricky Martin, nor do I think that Spice Girls are heavy metal. I don't whistle at each and every girl that passes by me, or have an English accent that resembles Kitchen Zulu (a type of broken English developed by some African tribes), or ramble about how difficult SSCs and HSCs are (almost nine thousand people got GPA 5 for God's sake!) and how horrendously easy O levels and A levels are. I don't talk about politics, think that the only use the Internet can be put to is to search for explicit sites or think that Baywatch is the best TV serial ever.

They find it their duty to remind me that I am a 'loser' as Il, cannot memorize a 500 pg mathematics book and have no talent in cricket! I however find it my duty to inform them that they are nothing but a bunch of prattling dilettantes; brainless quacks who suffer from serious inferiority complex. I do so by just ignoring them when they ramble such nonsense!

I happen to have a pet Alsatian and recently some of my neighbours formed a dog-hating cult! Basically they make up tall tales that my dog is a man-eater and tried to eat their kids (can't blame my dog for doing so as some of those obnoxious little brats justify why some animals eat their young!) and so we cannot keep him.

The leader of the cult is an elderly gentleman, Mr. X, who always chooses to take his nightly stroll just when I take my dog out for his walk, so that he can audibly mutter under his breath that dogs are 'napak', and its dangerous to keep mad dogs inside the house etc.

Interestingly my dog, normally an extremely innocuous creature that wouldn't hurt a fly, always fancied to nip one of Mr. X's pudgy legs. So one day I was walking my dog and Mr. X as usual was grumbling gibberish under his breath when suddenly, my dog's leash snapped! My dog charged at Mr. X, baring his sharp teeth and snapping his jaw.

I made absolutely no attempt to stop my dog and Mr. X stood there, petrified. He was frozen with fear for a moment and then with a speed greater than that of an Olympic sprinter, he ran off, yelling at the top of his voice. He didn't realise that the white piece of cloth hanging from my dog's mouth was his 'lungi', and he ran away without it. Boy! He wasn't too happy when I went over to his house to return his tattered 'lungi,' with an evil smirk on my face! Our neighbourhood is very well lighted and unfortunately all the neighbours saw what they shouldn't have seen that night!

And then, there is one neighbour of mine who always smells of fish! In fact it's impossible to go near him because he smells so horrible. He has the habit of buying a big Hilsha fish every morning and carrying it on his lap, and on his way up to his flat, cradling it and stroking it! He sometimes even whispers to the dead fish! It's kinda disturbing when you come to think of it!

Of course, I am not implying that all my neighbours are weird and irksome. Some of them, a very few, are in fact extremely decent people. But since the majority of them are otherwise, it's obvious that I carry a general loathing towards my neighbours and perceive them with great contempt. Ironically, I do not want my neighbours to abruptly change and become Tibetan Monks or something.

That's because it's quite enjoyable to witness their acts of extreme idiosyncrasies. But I do hope that the boys in my neighbourhood would get a life!

(Disclaimer: This article is a work of fiction (well, almost!). The opinions expressed in the article may be biased and belong solely to the writer. Readers may send opinions, fan mails, hate mails, love letters, marriage proposals, death threats, credit card numbers, net passwords, viruses blah blah blah to the following address: AES_the_freak@hotmail.com.)