KNOW THY NEIGHBOR, STUPID!

Two events made headlines in the second fortnight of July: The 40th anniversary of America’s first manned moon mission, Apollo 11. Two days later, the world’s superpower was debating whether or not the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a racial discrimination issue.

One channel even went on to conduct a public poll: Is race still a reality?

Even an astute president like Obama got carried away by the issue, when he castigated the local police for acting “stupidly”, a statement he resented the very next day by admitting that he should have been more careful about his choice of words. Good for the police officer; he got up, close and personal with the President over the last weekend on the widely publicized 'beer summit'. The media and people are still acidly split on the issue. The debate is far from over.

What amused me was not the police action or the racial overtones to the issue, but the fact that neither the caller nor the professor knew of each other as neighbors! The issue would be non-existent if they knew each other. It’s as simple.

To me, the problem is with the phone call itself. I imagine if it were India and if my neighbor would lose his key, he would knock on my door even in the middle of the night, have a cup of coffee chatting about the problem and then, both of us would wake up other neighbors in trying to break his lock so that he would get into his house. Once in, he would make coffee for all of us. We go to bed happy.

We would call the police and alert the neighbors only when we are sure the one breaking into the neighbor’s house is not the owner himself/herself.

In India, believe me, the police would arrest the caller for wasting their time if they discovered that his/her neighbor had had to break his lock to enter his own house because he/she had lost the key. If you don’t know your neighbors, the neighbors would take you as a terrorist and inform the police of your suspicious behavior. Believe me, the police would come and interrogate you to their satisfaction.

The trend of neighbors not being acquainted with each other in some big metropolitan cities in India is for the government and common people a matter of grave concern.

The police in my hometown of Nagpur run a program where they ask citizens to alert them if they found someone with suspicious behavior living in their neighborhood.

We are on the other extreme of ‘neighborhood dharma’!

I feel a tad sad to see that people don’t know or talk to each other in the neighborhood here, exceptions apart. For, if they knew each other, I bet, economic recession wouldn’t be this hard to take on.

When I first arrived in Fort Lauderdale, I felt like living in a no-man's land. I'd hardly see my neighbors. I didn't know if they existed, until on one day, I decided enough is enough and brandished my Indianness by knocking on their doors to say "Hi, I'm your next door neighbor; just so you knew I live here."

I wasn't doing any big favor to them, but to myself. I needed to know who lived around me. To my surprise, I found my neighbors surprisingly welcoming. They wanted to talk and connect as well. It took me exactly a week to discover that each of my neighbors had pets. Dogs never barked. Cats never crossed their line!

I am still unsure of what these pets do inside, when their owners leave for work!

It may sound cynical, but I see a distinct link between the two headlines. It shows the state of American society. The country unites in its flight to moon or mars or in its supposed fight against an unseen evil, but goes back to its individualism when it comes to personal and emotional relations up close.

I hope my nascent impression is wrong.