The Friendly Neighbourhood...

This has been waiting on the fringes of my schedule for quite some time now. Back home, I had promised friends, students, cousins and people of various reputation and texture, that I’d let them know about my life here in Poland.

 

It has been a quiet beginning of sorts, what with classes twice a week and little research to do as of now. Am kind of resting on the oars of my thesis and do not yet feel upto serious research. Research instincts, however, say wiry academicians, rarely die. Mine have been fed, in the past few weeks, on a rather inter-national group of interesting neighbours. I have an apartment on the tenth floor of a building that belongs to the university and am surrounded by visiting professors, poets, novelists, scriptwriters and weirdos of myriad nature and manner.

 

Take KB for example. Small-time Irish novelist—arrogant, idiosyncratic and interesting. A man from Galway, he laces the staccato rhythm of his conversation with discussions on the topography of Connemara, or the fishing facilities these days on the Aran Islands. Some journey this, for me, the wide-eyed admirer of Synge, to be spoken to about the Aran Islands by one who belongs there. Every Saturday morning KB will unfailingly knock at our door, inviting us in his quiet but certain manner, to a cup of coffee at Van Helder’s…And you cannot say no…The itch for those tales of Dublin…and he can go on about Joyce…about the short-story in Dubliners, The Dead, and how the boy in the story was a real-life love of Joyce’s wife…etcetera. Or once in a while, when all of us have suddenly fallen quiet, as it happens often in a conversation, he will break into The Lake Isle of Innisfree: ‘I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree’ he will begin in his quiet, brooding voice. Its almost like a reverie, and when we leave, late in the afternoon, endless cups of coffee down our pipes, ‘the day so soon has glided by’…

 

AT, the Brit brat from downstairs. Our first meeting was an event that might go into a book on the politics of Indo-Brit relations. It was a particularly quiet morning, and it was snowing outside. One of those mornings when you allow yourself to be in bed till noon. We had woken up eightish, thanks to a call from my in-laws in India—and there had been shuffle of feet, and movement, and activity, and some running around with tea being made, and the daily chores of morning life…And the doorbell rings. We are three days old in Poland and know none of our neighbours. I open the door to a face covered with the forearm, a lean figure of a man bent over the sill, and a rasping voice: ‘Could you keep the fucking noise down!!!! Yes!! Could You? Keep the fucking noise down?’ I am off my guard, scared, febrile. Quick, however, to gather my poise, I politely reply: a) We are not making much of a noise really; b) If he lived downstairs, he must be a neighbour, and should he not introduce himself?; c) Hello, I am Sumit, and this is my wife, and we are three days in Poland, and this is the first time some neighbour has asked after us…Would you like some tea?

 

I see I have made an impression. The man is completely taken in by an unforeseen form of South-Asian politeness and starts to mumble apologies…Its actually the drink last night, what with having been at someone’s party last night..can’t remember who, and having gone to bed really late,,,By the way I am AT, Welsh, script-writer, and thanks for the tea… etcetera. Introduction over, I ask him about colonial hangover—you see the Indian, the British, the drink last night, and the expletives all rolled into one…and that becomes a charged question. ‘But I am Welsh, you see!’ he quickly replies, and breaks into a wide disarming smile. We have been friends ever since, having invited each other over quite a few times…and I must add that AT is one of the sharpest men I have ever met. But he still starts squirming, sometimes, particularly when myself and KB start discussing aspects of British history and look him in the face if we happen to get stuck.

 

This much for a beginning on my Polish sojourn. More to follow…