The Insult
By Deepankar
Published by Deepankar at Smashwords
Copyright © 2012 Deepankar
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the author.
The new apartment was not satisfactory. If only my previous landlord hadn’t died suddenly I wouldn’t have to live in a place which didn’t offer any view. It all happened so quickly. I wanted to stay in Amboli and the only decent apartment that my agent could find me was on the top floor of a four storied building which was surrounded on three sides by skyscrapers. Cursing him and my misfortune I accepted, telling myself that at least I could see the sky from the balcony. Balconies were a rarity in Mumbai. It was a necessity for me since I suffered from claustrophobia. Closed spaces made me edgy. Coming home after spending long hours in my chicken coop office, I needed to see the sky. Clouds, birds, the moon, the stars, the occasional meteor, gave some meaning to an otherwise joyless existence.
What did I have to celebrate in this life of an advertising executive which was worse than a dog’s? My boss made me slog for twelve hours every day, six days a week. He used me like a jack of all trades. I was not good at anything and hence I was stuck to his firm. The office was like a bordello. Boss kept romancing each new woman who joined that stinking enterprise and the women hovered around him like bees since he was a well-known figure in the industry. I was, his stooge doing copywriting, designing, copy testing, storyboarding and anything else he found me fit to do for him including buying condoms for him when he was in hurry. I never received any appreciation for my efforts. Rather, I was the butt of his jokes for being loyal. I stuck to the firm hoping I would get a break. Hope changed to hopelessness in the past five years and I’m still there.
My life was simple. Every day I rushed to office at 8 AM and returned by 9.30 PM. I’d pour myself a shot of whisky and stand in the balcony looking out. A couple of drinks would be followed by dinner and then it would be bedtime. I had hardly made any friends in the city. My schedule didn’t permit meeting too many people and the one’s in my office gave me the creeps. I was one of the million faceless people in the city of whose existence nobody bothered. There was nothing more in my life. This had been my routine for the past five years and moving to my new place I didn’t expect any change in this.
Since there wasn't anything else to look at, the buildings around me became the default view and their dwellers part of my scenery. The buildings on my left and in the front afforded a clear view. The one on the right was to some distance, and I couldn’t see clearly the movements of the inhabitants in those flats. In the first month I started scrutinizing the building to my left. I realized that I had to crane my neck to look through the windows and it was painful. Also it made it look quite obvious that I was observing and the one thing which I didn’t want in my miserable life was wrong kind of attention. The balcony was my place of repose, my refuge. It was my escape from the world, from the bustling city of Mumbai, from the hordes of unfulfilled aspirations. I spent hours there, fighting my fears and failures. It wasn’t my stage where I would want to be noticed.
Hence I ended up looking straight which was easier. I could see all the way inside the apartments. I saw the residents watching TV, cooking, talking and fighting, sometimes dancing and very rarely kissing which made we wonder why we Indians kiss so less and are so shy in expressing our affections. I weaved stories about their lives as they moved in and out of my vision. I really tried to interpret their lives from their actions. I thought of myself as their invisible friend empathizing with their pain and sharing their joys. Did I think of myself as a sick pervert? Of course not! I was not trying to catch them without clothes. I was past that period where the greatest fascination for the mind was of the sexual kind. I was showing interest in their lives when no one else did. In fact, I felt I was doing a favor to them. I came to know the habitants of each apartment in the front building. I came to know the parents, the siblings, the working couple and the single woman. I saw the bachelors drinking every other day and the young girls throwing towels at each other. Their lives became a soap opera that I watched every day. It was an interesting experiment, sharing the lives of my distant neighbors without their knowledge.
I was half-afraid I would witness a murder one of these days like Rear Window. But nothing dramatic ever happened. Every household seemed to have a set pattern and after a few months I could predict what would happen in a house at a certain hour. There was no beautiful girl practicing the ballet, no old woman holding the bars of a window crying for help, no major fights worth remembering and no kisses exchanged between passionate lovers. I was on the verge of giving my new found hobby when a particular apartment captured my imagination. This apartment was directly in front of my balcony and invariably was the most scanned one. It was always in perfect order like a frozen chess set. The apartment had three denizens, two men and a woman, who lived in absolute harmony, so much so that I considered the possibility of them being aliens of superior intelligence who rarely needed to communicate. The husband and wife could be distinguished as they always went to bed together. The elderly man I imagined to be the guy’s father for no better reason than the fact that the other two hardly every spoke to him and thereby I concluded that the woman didn’t like her father-in-law and must’ve warned her husband against indulging his father. The elderly man would spend his evenings reading or listening to records while his son would watch TV with his wife, when she was not in the kitchen, throwing garbage out of the window. The couple didn’t show any chemistry. Their interaction was casual as if they were enduring each other. The three of them lived their lives in mutual toleration, vacuity and an incredible monotony. They never fought, never raised their voices, never laughed and were extremely civil to each other.
My interest was aroused when I observed a change in pattern which was synchronized with my activities. The woman, whom I had named Alice, would appear in the kitchen whenever I was in the balcony. They had a cook and all she used to do was heat the food and serve herself and her husband. Of late, she came to the kitchen on some pretext like making a salad, cleaning the kitchen counter, repeatedly opening and closing the refrigerator for no visible reason. The kitchen gave her complete privacy since the men never came there while she was present. I saw her sacrificing her TV shows to make frequent appearances in the kitchen. Her clothes changed. Her colorless nightgown became a flashy green outfit from where her arms jutted voluptuously. She started working out in her bedroom wearing floral shorts which showed a ton of flesh to anyone who was looking. She stayed up late and the curtains in her bedroom were not drawn as long as I stood in my balcony.