Thoughts and other trivia...

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Shiny Happy People


So, I heard some loud fighting outside, between two families in the next building just now. They’ve fought once before, noisily and bitterly. House 1 has this old couple, the grandparents, their young-ish son and daughter-in-law and two small kids. The other house has an old couple and their young son, who’s long been divorced.

They were arguing loudly enough for me to be able to hear them from my room, where I am right now, working. It’s hard for me to translate this well into English but, at one point, the wife from House 1 screeched accusingly that theirs is a full and happy house. At once, the insinuation was that the other house is a sad, empty place because the chap is divorced and has no wife and/or kids.

Wow! I’m feeling a bit shell-shocked at the statement, especially because it also made me wonder what she’d say if I ever got into a fight with this woman. She’d rip into me, I’m sure, because, unlike that chap, who lives with his parents, I live all alone in a house that’s clearly too big for one person. What’s worse, unlike that poor blighter, I'm not even married! Man, she’ll make a meal of me, I’m sure.

What’s with people! Really.

6 Comments:

Blogger austere said...

I guess you'd better not fight with her, heh.

Welcome to the real world, boss. You haven't had absolute strangers check your vital stats (oh yes, they do) and probe, so WHY didn't you get married?
I have now moved to inventive answers.
The best part of Mumbai is that no one gives a damn.

10:52 pm  
Blogger GhostOfTomJoad said...

Oh, I'm not fighting with her! Funny thing is that every time she passes by the house and I'm around, she gives me a look that I've not been able to decipher yet. It's either contempt or some strange curiosity.

I've lived long enough in Bombay as well :-) and, trust me, I've been asked more direct questions there than I've been asked in Delhi.

11:16 pm  
Anonymous Sanjana said...

As opposed to her "full &happy house",your's is a spacious, happy house, THANK GOD!

Her kinda happy is not your's, so she'd have no argument. She making a meal of you cos you live alone? Pfft! She's got nothing!

12:42 pm  
Blogger GhostOfTomJoad said...

:-) I know. But, thanks for the vote of confidence ;-)

Just goes to show that, inevitably, people can't help but reveal who they really are. And, I worry because this woman is a teacher in a school!

God help those kids.

1:18 pm  
Anonymous Sanjana said...

*yours.

embarrassed

1:23 pm  
Blogger GhostOfTomJoad said...

Nah, don't be. We make bigger mistakes.

3:00 pm  

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