Intolerable

Everything is tolerable, but there must be a limit. I mean, I’m being objective here – I have a right to be prejudiced – but no, I believe my fellow hostelites, my neighbours in particular, have a right to make as much noise as they like. But not to the extent that it bothers me! Uncontrolled and incessant noise can lead to irritability, high blood pressure, cause headaches, insomnia and hinder the psychological functioning of the brain! Did you fuckin’ know that? It’s not that I mind the sporadic squeals of jubilation when they pull off a freak head shot in Counter Strike, really I don’t, but even the most regimented soul can alter its routine occasionally. Give that the architects responsible for designing the rooms in our hostel were challenged with impaired spatial reasoning, and the fact that they made rooms that are 20 by 6, (each hostel room entrance actually looks like the door to a very deep closet) , and doing so, ran out of bricks midway and decided to construct the remainder of the wall out of the cheap plastic substitute used in office cubicles ( May they never find employment and starve to death on the streets), it is but natural to expect a little noise from the adjoining room from time to time. But when their vocal cords have the physical ineptitude to produce anything other than the same shrill wailing cry every time something worthy of a little excitement happens, it takes the height of human tolerance to keep the smile on your face and be polite. If I were a vindictive man, I’d even go as far as to point out that by now, I can even squawk out a pretty good imitation of the sound they emit. It starts with a ‘Woo’, more flat than shrill, then a ‘Hoo’, shriller, then a short sucking in of breath, then a repeated ‘Hoo’ growing progressively shriller till your eardrums explode and/or you begin to feel you’ve lost your hearing. Aside from the fact that this makes them sound like a bunch of gorillas( pansy ones at that), they’ve breached my faith in my once-unerring belief that everyone can be creative. I mean I’d at least have expected them to experiment a bit more with the wail. Coz otherwise, it’s the same monotonous shriek no matter what tragedy or ecstasy befalls these excitable primates! “Hey man, I got a Linkin Park album! Woo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo!” or “Hey man, your mom just died! Woo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo!” or even “Dude I got diarrhea and just lost bowel control all over your bedsheet! Woo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo!” Often I have found myself awakened to the sounds of these vociferous widows, recently bereaved of their beloved husbands, and have wondered, seated on my bed at ungodly hours in the night, if I would be doing them a favour by silently injecting carbon monoxide into their room through a crack in the wall. If only to get them to stop listening to Linkin Park!

I’m a reasonable man. I judge not the voyeuristic urges of the lizards that infest our bathrooms and watch gleefully as we take out baths. It was a bit of a slippery task at first to keep one eye on the wall while soaping myself, but thank god for myopia. Seeing is believing, I always say. I never saw the cunt shit Indian style on the western toilet, so what if there are footprints on the seat and a long brown shit-stain on the commode? I never saw the Chinese fuckface dump food residue in the basin. So what if he’s the only one with a kitchen cabinet and it’s now attracting insects? I didn’t see the drunk motherfucker puke in the corridor. So what if there’s a long dripping trail all the way to his room? Will I not wish him a pleasant good morning the next day when I bump into him? Of course I will! Maybe I’ll shout in his ears and shine a torch in his eyes and slap the hangover out of him!

You see life doesn’t have to be that bad. As long as there are complaint registers at the security desk downstairs. Yet somehow, I feel they mix valium with the sambar in our breakfast, and it is just for me to think so as I have just read the response to the complaint note I had made yesterday asking someone to do something about the cockroaches in the washroom.

“There are cockroaches in the basin,” I wrote, “I can see their feelers through the little holes under the tap. There are at least four of them. I think they tap dance and do a barber-shop quartet jig once the lights are off. Kill them!”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” was the reply, “ What would the lizards eat?”

It was obvious it’s another resident. So I replied.

“Well, if they haven’t eaten them yet, they’re clearly in league with each other!”

This has now started a long comment thread with the greater part of the vox populi of the hostel being at least some sort of an opinion about it. You might say we live in an age where Facebook dictates out lives when you hear that someone interjected with a comment that said ‘Like’. Someday, you will find a couple of mangled corpses in room 104 with their throats stuffed with the crushed remains of their Linkin Park cd’s. You will find dead lizards in the bathroom and dead Chinese people in the corridor. You will find nothing but a smashed laptop in my room. You will find peace in the knowledge that I’m well and one with nature in my jungle abode in the Sunderbans.