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Neighbours: Urban versus Rural

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By: Desh Bir

“Love thy neighbour as thyself”, advocates Christianity. That’s a vote in favour of societal ethics where ideally there should be no hatred, rancor or prejudice. However, the truth is that there are good neighbours and not-so-good neighbours, but also bad neighbours. Friends can be chosen, but we don’t get to pick our neighbours. They are there by the writ of chance and you can’t do anything to reverse the arrangement.

Whether we are there in the urban habitation or in a village, a good neighbor is a found treasure. A good neighbour, is the first known person to whom we turn in times of emergency, even before we summon our blood relations for any kind of help. However, there is a major difference of approach and attitude among villagers and urbanites towards people living in their neighbourhood.

A rural society is fairly close-knit and it is in the blood of a villager to  wish to know what goes on in the neighbourhood or in the next row of houses or who visited whom on a particular day or morning or noon or evening. Broadly speaking, the village folk have been living in a commonly shared matrix of concerns, values and set of information. Therefore villagers do show a more lively awareness of the social gel that wraps them and determines their affinities as well as dislikes. Here they have shared experiences on social gatherings that keep bringing them together all the year round.

The city man, on the other hand, has his own cocoon of personal pursuits, perceptions, prejudices and engagements which keep him from taking any keen interest in what goes on nearby. In his neighborhood, he knows some faces and knows their names or vocations, but he does it mechanically, only to accost them or to get greeted with the same lack of warmth whenever the two pass by.

It is rightly observed: “If you want to know people and not be known, go and live in a city”. Relations with neighbours in an urban set up are quite superficial and tangential, lending us no insight into perspectives such as their likes, longings, problems and concerns. Both sides feel contented with this minimal level of mutual involvement.

On the contrary, in a rural community, your neighbor knows even who visits you or what kind of friends you or your children have, or what is cooking in your kitchen, or how happy your married children are. No doubt, such curiosity, at times, is misplaced and motivated by malice. Yet, there is a kind of indicator how closely the rural neighbors, generally remain connected with one another.

I admit that I have lived in the present urban house and its neighbourhood for 34 years, yet I have failed miserably in maintaining a healthy insight into the lives of the families living around except knowing their bare names or vocations.

How their children are doing in their ventures in other stations or abroad, I have never tried to know. I do feel warmly inclined towards most them , but neither I nor they have ventured to show such warmth in occasionally close interaction which could have created a closer bonding leading to a pleasant  gelling with fellow beings living in proximity. My fault ! I can’t blame anyone before blaming myself for such apathy.

As I lived in a rural set up for the first 17 years of my life, I have seen both sides of this story and therefore I feel the pangs of inability on my part more acutely and with a sense of guilt. Many times, in my solo musings have I resolved to make a beginning to be warm like our rustic counterparts? Yet I have only procrastinated and not done any practical advances in warming upto my urban neighbours. Mainly, my own failing, I am sure!

(The author is a Retired Principal, Govt. College, Hoshiarpur [Punjab)

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