Index of Journals
This should be an incident happening somewhere around the mid of the year 2016. I was staying in the Manu Apartments. It is a posh society in East Delhi, Mayur Vihar with seven story high residential towers. As a society, it also had a management committee that would decide what to do with the maintenance funds that they received from the residents. This time they decided to build a fountain in the society. Sadly, the fountain that they build was right next to my flat so much so that if I would drop something from the balcony in a vertical free fall, it would drop in the fountain water. My flat was on the ground floor. The fountain has five hoses from which the water could be pushed out up to the heights of third or fourth floor and when they ran the fountain the height of the water coming from these hoses would be over 2 feet. The fountain floor layout was of the shape enclosed between an arc and a straight line and it spread from the right corner of the flat to the left spanning my bedroom, then the balcony and then my grandparents’ bedroom. The policy that management committee drew was that they would run it for two hours in the morning from 8 am to 10 am and two hours in the evening from 6 pm to 8 pm. The fountain had rendered my room to be unlivable. When the fountain ran, you can’t sleep, you can’t study, you can’t talk on phone as the person on the other end would hear the sound of the water, you can’t think, you can’t rest. You have to constantly monitor your body, your thoughts, your emotions so that you can remain calm.When my family (my uncle, aunt, grandma and my sister Srishti) went to speak to the management committee on the Sunday afternoon in the weekly meeting of those seven people (the president, secretary, treasurer, one female member and three other members), the treasurer (a man and I think a lawyer) gave an argument that I don’t think anyone should forget who is in management, law or politics.We told them that we were facing difficulty in conducting our day to day life when they operated the fountain. The treasurer said that you have to look at the utility of it. We can’t make 199 other residents unhappy because you have a problem. A tactic that the secretary had employed to disarm us was of 'appreciation'. My aunt had expressed her concerns that society had set up a 'chaupaal' (open and common sitting area) in front of our balcony on the opposite side of the peripheral road. Aunt said it is not going to be good that drivers, security staff or support staff such as electricians or plumbers sit there and be able to watch us. To this the secretary smiled and said, "I appreciate how vigilant you have been about all this and everyone should be when it comes to security." There is another man I’d like to quote here, he is the son of the president of the society and he said, “A waterbody’s location and placement was good for the society according to the Feng shui.” I am not sure why didn’t he built it in his house if it were so important. It wasn’t only after it was completely done that we protested of this construction. My aunt had protested for this construction even when it was being built. She mentioned in the meeting that waterbody so close to the flat would result in damp patches, blotches or streaks in the walls and would also be a breeding place for the mosquitoes in the summers and fall. Nothing changed, the arugments had fallen on deaf ears. I left the society in the December for the reasons of my health and studies; my family still lives there. Any disturbance, any source of worry should not be taken lightly as shown in this excerpt from the book "How to stop worrying and start living" by Dale Carnegie: When the cruel Chinese war lords wanted to torture their prisoners, they would tie their prisoners hand and foot and put them under a bag of water that constantly dripped... dripped... dripped... day and night. These drops of water constantly falling on the head finally became like the sound of hammer blows-and drove men insane. This same method of torture was used during the Spanish Inquisition and in German concentration camps under Hitler. Worry is like the constant drip, drip, drip of water; and the constant drip, drip, drip of worry often drives men to insanity and suicide.
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