Days with fleas in my ears

We had a peculiar neighbour. When I say peculiar it goes to such an extent that I used to run away from his peculiarity of the sustained high-pitched tone of whining. He has something or the other always to clutch at. Either it is about the other neighbour’s black cat every morning he looks at first when he opens his main door or about the darned nuisance created by the songbirds or the cock waking him up early morning. He even complains about the owls blasting in and fracturing his silent nights with their unholy hoots invariably followed by a proverbial death news the following day.

The other day he happened along again. This time it was a deluge about the irresponsibility of a neighbour lady on her black tomcat’s behaviour. He saw the ‘darned thing’ go by his window with a dead robin in his mouth. As usual, he complained to the owner of the cat. She just laughed it off saying, “The cat’s just acting naturally!’’ Needless to mention that he didn’t like her attitude towards the carnage that the beast was wreaking. Not only did it end there, it also gave him a flea in his ear reminding a complaint he once made over the chirping that begins at the wee hours.

And she had sealed it up saying: Good for your sleep!
That event irritated him and he vented the whole hot air out on me. I remember once he complained about the bloody birds returning in April from down south to make the month the ‘cruellest’ as T S Eliot opined. For him, the season of November to March provides him unbridled peace—no noisy birds, snowy and sleepy neighbourhoods, less traffic and what not!

Normally, people in Canada eagerly wait to get rid of the winter and welcome the advent of spring. All living creatures show up their heads after a long hibernation by the beginning of April. Children are waiting for the Victoria Day to blow up the whole stock of their firecrackers. Imagine the plight of a neighbour who is vigilant in his sleep. He opens his door and comes out on the night of Victoria Day shouting, “Who the hell on earth are bombing the night?’’ No sooner, he finds that our children are bursting crackers. He shuts the door.

When everybody is heading for camping, my neighbour complains about the songbirds which ate up his blueberries and then pooped prodigiously on his white car forcing him to swab stoutly to get that stuff off. And I’m thinking of making an underground passage starting right from my living room to the next junction to escape an insidious trap of listening to my neighbour’s complaints that delays my office trips.

Suresh Nellikode

(New Indian Express - Jun 24, 2017)