Between neighbors’ dogs barking at all hours to guitar jams commencing at the stroke of midnight to hosts that don’t know when to end their garden parties, I’ve come to learn that Robert Frost got it all wrong: Good fences do not make good neighbors. Ten-feet high walls are pointless unless you’ve built yourself a soundproof house. Fences alone, you see, don’t carry that much weight.
In a city like Kathmandu where every inch is squandered, houses are built so close together that you can often hear your neighbor’s television. Actually, if the couple next door is fighting, you will feel like you are in it because the snarls will be so clear. If your neighbor decides a jam session is due, you’ll hear him slur through the songs. And heaven forbid, if your neighbors decide throwing a private party on their lawn will do, you will be subject to their unusually poor choice of music.
Because of that fact, sometimes you have to excuse the rude folks next door, but sometimes when absurdity cannot be placated, calling the local police and asking them to remind the kind folks on your street of the time is all you can do.
I’m not one to pick up a fight with my neighbor and let’s be honest, how much reasoning can be used with drunkards? So, I’ve come to greatly appreciate the services Nepal Police has availed the citizens of this city. I should know, I’ve called them up twice, convinced them they don’t need an exact address - driving toward the street, the house with their bass or the old boombox set to loud is much too obvious.
And yet even aside from parties and mini-concerts, I was always puzzled by 4 am wedding processions and midnight death rituals. Of course the former are for entertainment and the latter in line with tradition and religion and so deserves more consideration on my part, but I still couldn’t understand the need to create a ruckus on the public sphere when dealing with affairs that private.
Perhaps our disdain for factoring in neighbors’ needs and basic courtesy stems from our rural roots. Traditionally, Nepali villages are very open – visiting my parents’ villages have made that much evident to me. There is little marked differentiation between that which is private and public. In other words, everyone knows everyone’s business and no one can dare tell anyone to mind their own business.
Life in the village is often routine and occasional night-long festivities are a social glue to keep the community together. The city, on the other hand, demands a different approach. We need to respect next-door’s earnest need for privacy.
Village life is the grandfather of all social networking site – whether for the good or bad of it. In an era preceding Facebook, village gossip was what our generation calls news feed. While one’s abortions, elopements, promotions, divorces and finances are disclosed to the village before it is announced to the family, the entire community also shares in the rejoicing and mourning of life.
As such, when a wedding is to take place, it is not a familial affair, but transformed into that of the entire village. Everyone is involved – whether in the matchmaking, potato peeling or the actual ceremony. Hence, it is not at all inconsiderate to have the band play music – loud enough and long enough – for the whole neighborhood to hear as the purpose is to have the entire neighborhood participate. Same story with births and deaths, why banging on the drums and playing the traditional horns to usher the soul into the next life in the middle of the night was not a problem either. It was likely, after all, that much of the village too was mourning in the same courtyard.
Unfortunately, life in the city is disjointed and individualized. Maybe, in the process of urbanizing ourselves we forgot to shed our rural ways as and when appropriate. Life in the village is often routine and such forms of occasional night-long festivities are a social glue to keep the community together and in good spirits. The city, on the other hand, demands a different approach.
We need to respect next-door’s earnest need for privacy. The daughter might be preparing for finals or the mother for her presentation. You may be marrying off your daughter, but I’ve got to get to work early in the morning and I really cannot participate in your merry-making until the wee hours (not that I was invited anyway).
Or maybe we just need to find a viable middle ground. That you can enjoy until certain hours. Or take to one of those party palaces. (I do wonder though how it would be like to live near one of those.) I really do hate calling the police on my neighbors. This leads me to a question: If Nepal Police force bars and restaurants to close by 11 pm, should not the not-so-private parties in the neighborhood respect the same curfew?
sradda.thapa@gmail.com
Related story
Sajha Party demands govt erect barbed wire fences along Indo-Ne...
