On my return to Chennai after retirement a few years ago, I moved into an old single-story house among a row of similar houses. It was in a relatively quiet neighbourhood on the outskirts of town. I gave myself a pat on the back for the fine selection I had made.
However, this jubilation did not last long. I was awakened early one morning by a deafening noise and violent vibrations caused by a giant bulldozer that was razing the neighbouring building on the eastern side of my south-facing house. A cloud of dust filled the air. Flimsy dust screens surrounding the house under demolition could hardly prevent dust from spreading all around. The result was that all of us in the family started wearing face masks, very much ahead of the advent of Covid 19!
A thatched shed popped up overnight abutting the barbed-wire fence, which was crushed in the process, obviously to house the watchman. Building materials like scaffolds and steel rods arrived on the street near our house. A mini workshop was set up on the road to cut steel rods to size, twist, turn, and bind and weld them.
Also Read | Malabar musings
Many a scooter rider lost control and skidded on the indiscriminately spread sand over the cul-de-sac. Water tankers and trucks moving back and forth with their drivers honking blaring horns created a bedlam and rendered even walking a difficult task, not to speak of the movement of vehicles. The earth mover’s high decibel noise, the metallic sound of hammering and piling, the whirring noise of a rotating concrete mixer, the jarring sound of drilling machines, the sparking of welding work, and the stomping and cacophony of construction workers all ruined what little peace we had.
This situation continued for well nigh a year. My several attempts to meet the owner of the upcoming building did not fructify, as he rarely visited the site. One evening, even as I heaved a sigh of relief after the major portion of the construction was over, along came a gentleman with whom I had never even had a nodding acquaintance before.
He introduced himself as my eastern side neighbour. He had come to invite me to his housewarming function. For the sake of courtesy and in keeping with the principle of good neighborliness,
I attended the function, forgetting the ordeal I had undergone.
The ordeal itself could have been avoided if the owner had met me before the construction started and notified me in advance of the noisy construction work ahead.