The New Neighbour

Ash Shah

Illustrated by Riley Stratton

The new neighbour moved into the Menzes villa at the peak of my writer’s block. The day he arrived, I was examining the coffee rings on the wooden writing desk that I’d received as a gift from Avó, thinking of how my grandmother was the first blank page I had encountered. Avó only spoke Portuguese, much like the vanishing Catholics of her generation. I had grown up feasting on the mystery of her words, picking through them like brambles and carving my own path through the maze of sentences she spoke. Sometimes, I pretended that she said I was her favourite. Sometimes, it was that I reminded her of herself. She was proof that meaning was in the eye of the beholder, that love could be built on misshapen translations. 

I tried to scrub off the coffee rings, wondering how I’d only just noticed them, when I heard the sound of wheeled baggage crunching along the paved walkway. Another temporary neighbour on the other side of the wall. The bifurcated Menzes villa was at the corner of a quiet street in Aldona. The new neighbour and I each had a private entrance to our house. I say our house because only a thin, cracked wall with a locked door separated our living spaces. My side of the house was owned by the sister that lived in Dubai and rarely bothered me, as long as I transferred the rent on time. The other side was owned by the miserly brother who lived two streets away and typically rented it out as an Airbnb. He kicked up a fuss when things needed to be fixed. It was only after four tenants in a row left earlier than planned because of the mould growing on the bedroom wall that he felt compelled to take action.   

Beyond the passing realisation that another occupant was on the other side of the wall, I didn’t pay the new neighbour any further mind. I continued hopelessly working on my collection of short stories, my magna carta. My first two books had done relatively well. The concept for this one was to embed metaphors for the climate crisis in a way that inspired children to take charge of their futures. I was on the cusp of turning thirty. I had no intention of materialising children of my own. This  book was my substitute offering in place of a living, breathing infant who would one day dedicate his life to becoming a cog in the machine of society. 

Anxiety around the looming deadline had taken its toll on me. I typically wrote best in exile, but these days, even the bright green leaves of the mango trees in the garden looked insipid and dull. I rarely turned my phone on and when I did, it would only be to vent to my best friend who lived in a land far, far away – Delhi. My thick curly hair hung in a loose bun at the nape of my neck, greasy and unwashed, a sight that would have made my mother chase me around the house with a fine toothed comb. I had moved out of my parents’ house in the thick of Panjim four years ago, once it became apparent that the sounds of them arguing were not conducive to my character development anymore. I was ready to fully embody the life of a solitary writer, nestled in a banana-yellow villa on a road fringed with kokum trees, a place where I could hear my thoughts without the pell-mell of horns and constant bickering. Over the years, I had made a few friends in Aldona, but they tended to live here only in the winter, spending the other half of the year up in the mountains. Presently, there was no one to hold me accountable to what normal people would consider a basic standard of life. I wasn’t trying to meet the love of my life on a dating app, I cared little for excursions to cocktail bars where people congregated to complain about their crazy Goan landlords. Even swimming in the sea was too indulgent. I wasn’t seeking pleasure at a time like this, the rules of storytelling forbid it. Act One: get your protagonist stuck in a tree. Act Two: throw rocks at them. Act Three: Either get them down, or leave them up there, but either way, they are fundamentally changed and that is all that matters. In order to be rewarded with inspiration from the universe, I knew I had to let myself spiral unapologetically. 

*

The next day, I got a message from the sister in Dubai, saying that a long-term renter had moved in next to me and to let her know if he caused any disturbances. It was days before I saw the new neighbour in person. The rain kept us confined to our own sides of the house for the better part of the day. When we stepped out, it was in large hooded rain jackets from our separate entrances. Mine was a periwinkle blue, brought back by an aunt who lived in Spain. His was a rusty-red, the kind you could buy in Mapusa market with matching rainproof trousers. 

One morning, when the rain stopped battering down long enough for the sun to spill through the sky, I stepped out of the backdoor gingerly, my toes squishing the wet mud. I had a big green Tupperware box in my hands, full of food scraps that I needed to dispose of. Although the front of the house was separated by a wall, the back garden was a lawless space where the deluge reigned. Tall grass grew above hip height. Vines curled around the spines of trees. At the far end stood a banyan tree with roots descending from its branches into the clumpy mud. 

I emptied the contents of the box into the grass, watching the fractaled orange peels and eggshells disappear into the understory. The rain would turn all of it into manure for more grass to grow. And grow it would, until the end of September, when the miserly brother would hire a gardener to raze down the burgeoning expanse of an infant jungle and send me half of the bill on that very day. Deforestation was not included in the household expenses I paid to his sister. 

Suddenly, I saw a movement in the banyan tree. Thinking it was a bird or a monkey, I craned my neck and lifted my hand to my forehead to shield my eyes from the speckled light. I saw the new neighbour straddling a thick branch and using one of the aerial roots to hoist himself higher up the tree. His face was partially obscured by emerald green leaves but I could make out a sharp jawline, fluffy moustache and skin a few shades darker than mine. My breath stopped. I continued watching as he made his ascent. One limb over another, until he disappeared into the canopy. The stench of rot from the empty box wafted through my nostrils but I waited, even as the sensation of earthworms crawling over my toes grew apparent. I waited until the rain started to crash down again, at which point I had to dash back into the house to avoid getting caught in the downpour.  

I felt different as I changed into dry clothes. My body whirred like a bee was trapped inside it. I draped the damp dress over the rickety chair on the porch and placed my hand on my chest to steady it. I sat down at my writing desk, which was propped against the common wall. This time, when I picked up the blue pen, the whirring quickened. I scratched out streams of fantasy where the tall grass became a battalion of giants that expanded in the rain. The orange peels turned into an orange rabbit who warned the village of impending doom. The new neighbour, caught in the arms of the banyan tree, turned into an unlikely hero, a village boy who evaded working the fields by sleeping in trees. The chosen one - only he could stop the flood from swallowing the village. As I wrote, images of the new neighbour’s face danced before my eyes.

*

After this, I began to pay closer attention to the new neighbour. There was a gap in the wall where the two slopes of the slanted roof met, and sounds travelled the distance to bring tidings from the other side. Sometimes, when there was a lull in the rain, I would hear him move about the house. The click of his lighter told me every time he lit a cigarette or an incense stick. If the wind was blowing in the right direction, the smell would give away which of the two it was. When I heard the clatter of pots and pans, I played jazz loudly, picturing him swinging his hips as he chopped onions. When I cooked, I chose spices that had strong aromas so the fragrance would waft over to his side. Garlic and mustard seeds crackling in oil, sticks of cinnamon sending spires of scent into the air, curry leaves sputtering in the steam. I was sending up flares to say, I am here, I am here, notice me.

The first story was followed by another. I became acutely aware of the new neighbour when he was in the house and pined for him when he wasn’t. I would close my eyes and sketch his movements in my mind from the moment he entered the door. He always closed it gently, never with a slam. He hit keys on his laptop late into the night. I could hear him if I pressed my ear to the common door. I surmised that he worked from home, just like I did. Sometimes, the rain slowed and the monkeys used our roof as a corridor. They thumped over the red tiles, occasionally breaking a few. Fixing the roof was not covered under expenses and a bill would be sent for every new tile that had to be put into place. I pictured the new neighbour glaring at the bill in exasperation, his handsome face contorted in a frown, and complaining about it to the miserly brother, who would wash his hands off it. When you rent, it is your house. Your house, your problem, he would say. I was thrilled at the idea of us experiencing  a shared nuisance under the same roof. 

The new neighbour appeared to be about my age, give or take a couple of years. He was lean and lanky with long fingers and toes. His hair had grown into a soft shag that fell over his dark brown eyes. My sightings of him grew more frequent once the monsoon petered away. He spoke on the phone often, sometimes inside the house, sometimes in the walkway, pacing up and down as his free hand drew wide circles when he talked. I knew when he was about to leave the house because I would hear him scampering around, gathering things that he would zip into a bag, searching for his keys with chunky expletives rolling off his tongue. He would go from being soundless and still to rushed and running in seconds, as though time had conspired to fool him about its elasticity. I would pad into the walkway and peer over the top of the skinny brick wall that had pieces of broken glass lodged into it like wafers on a sundae. This was to discourage all of God’s creatures from resting on the wall. It camouflaged me while I watched the new neighbour rev his rusty black scooter and leave through the gate. I would sneak up to the gate and latch it for him. The miserly brother was strict about keeping the gates to the Menzes property closed so stray dogs could not enter. 

Sometimes, when I watched him disappear from the gate, whistling into the dusky evening, I longed to say hello, to ask him where he was going. The words would form and wilt in my throat. As long as he remained locked in the fugue of interpretations, he was mine, malleable. While unknown, he was a square of brightly coloured paper that could be folded into an origami crane or boat. Some days, he was the village boy who slept in trees. Some days, when I saw him speed away on his scooter, he was a postman who delivered messages from other realms to children. When he cooked, he was brewing a potion that would make all those who drank it speak only the truth for twenty-four hours. He became an elixir for my anxiety. As long as he remained on the other side of the wall, I was able to shower, feed myself and keep writing, one story after another, until the deadlines stopped being so daunting. 

*

One day, I walked through the door and heard a woman’s voice from his side of the house. I dropped the tattered cloth bag of vegetables to the floor and ran over to the common door to listen. They spoke in low tones. I couldn’t make out a word of what they were saying. He turned the music up and I began to simmer with rage. I sat with my back to the common door late into the night, picking at the flecks of dead skin on my fingers until I heard the sound of her leaving. In some perverse way, I felt like I had ownership of the new neighbour. We had never spoken, but I knew him better than anyone else could. Through the sharp dashes of my pen, he was transformed into something layered and full of intrigue. 

I realised that I would have to establish contact. And I had to do so without breaking the spell. I couldn’t walk into the garden and invite him over for a cup of tea like a normal person. There was a chance that we would get to know each other and he would disappoint me, or I would disappoint him. If the mirage was exposed, I would never be able to write him into a story again. Until the book was done and the last deadline has been met, we were still in the second act, but I could see that the plot lacked tension. 

I spent the rest of the night typing up the first short story, where he was cast as the boy who slept in treetops. The next day, I scootered into town to get it printed. The rice fields gleamed with a yellow-green lustre in the aftermath of monsoon. Any day now, a bill for the garden would be shoved in through the thin slot of my burgundy letterbox. The grass had grown so high that I could barely make out the banyan tree at the far end. 

The next time the new neighbour left the house, I took the sheaf of printed papers and pushed it through the gap in the common door. This way, he would know it was from me. Days passed and nothing happened. Every morning, I would wake up and check if he had sent anything back. I subsisted on coffee and instant noodles, in those days that were marked by little besides waiting. I wondered if my dread had a smell that he could catch whiffs of on the other side of the wall. 

I forced myself to go to the beach one evening, just for a walk. Hordes of tourists had gathered for sunset. They faced the sea with coconuts in their hands, their frisbees and volleyballs  set down on the clammy brown sand to observe the departure of the distant pinprick of light that dominated the day’s affairs. Lines of clouds appeared in the plum-coloured sky, their edges tinted with teal, a traffic of murky shades that made my stomach churn. It seemed to me that the same sky could be a thing of beauty or terror - everything was a matter of interpretation, everything was a blank page filled in by the observer. 

*

I came home to find the same sheaf pushed back to my side of the house. I crouched onto the cold white tiles and ran my fingers over the pages, then carried them gently to my bed like they were made of glass. Several lines had been highlighted. Some of them had a smiley face drawn next to them. The same feeling returned, the one that had seized my body when I spied on him climbing the banyan tree. The first exchange was followed by another. I’d push drafts of stories through the door and he would send them back in a day or two. He began to leave notes at the end. 

A teenage detective investigating the disappearance of the river he bathed in as a child - what a clever way of getting the climate crisis across, of making the politics personal. Do you have a river of your own that you mourn? 

The recurring orange rabbit intrigues me. I wonder, what does he symbolise to you? 

I can’t say I’m a fan of this Western style Grim Reaper figure you’ve brought in, but I can see how he serves the plot. Did you read Amar Chitra Katha as a kid? I’m a sucker for an old-fashioned asura. 

I would send my answer with the next story, unravelling one seam at a time, protracting this part of the tale, leaving a couple of days in between messages. He followed suit, each of us aware of the choreography of this dance, falling into the same beat. I wondered if he realised that he was the protagonist of every story.

  On a warm night, I sat on the rickety chair on the porch. The wind blew in from the empty street, causing the tips of my hair to flutter. I watched a moth bash its body against the flickering light bulb and then hit the switch so it could be liberated from its Sisyphean misadventure. A gentle tap of footsteps against the tiles and the new neighbour opened his door, closed it and sank onto a chair on his porch. I heard its legs screech against the floor. The wind picked up, and I realised that my breathing had become shallow. All I had to do was stand up, stick my head out and say hello. 

Before I could make up my mind, the notes of a flute emerged softly through the wind. I clutched the thin wooden arms of the chair tightly and the sounds grew louder. A lilting symphony bridged the distance between us. I could feel each note on my skin, grazing each hair on my head, pulsing warmly through my blood. I could taste the honeyed night as the clipped beats of time retreated. I wanted to reach out and touch him, run my fingers over his corporeal form and investigate who he truly was. Had any of my characters captured his essence? Was he entirely made up in my head? I longed to move but I remained glued to the chair, the sonorous melody rendering the night as a thing both alive and ominous in its propensity to turn my world upside down. 

I took a breath that rose deep in my stomach. I had to tread lightly. One forceful flick of the wrist and the house of cards would collapse. Once I had finished writing the book, I could knock on his door. We could have that cup of tea. I could show him Avó’s desk, where I had written him into my stories. We have time, I told myself, we have nothing but time.

*

Every now and then, on a quiet night, he would play for me from the porch. This was his offering. I had words, but he had something better. I could only send along things that demanded private viewing, that confined us to our parallel lives, lines drawn side by side that never intersected. His was a method that made even our silences feel collaborative, like we were moving this mass of energy in the same direction. I wasn’t sure what we were building, whether it was a creative enterprise or some brand of love. Or whether those two could be the same thing. We were like tiny waves feathering at each other’s shores. 

I never saw the new neighbour climb the tree again, perhaps he was hiding too. By this point, a silhouette of who he was had emerged, one that was taking on a more and more distinct form. I knew that he’d grown up in Bangalore, that one of his grandmothers was from the other side of the Kaveri, that he was partial to coconut chutney the way she made it. He believed in ghosts but not in God. He watched a film every day while he ate lunch, usually slow-burn arthouse films in which everything was romantic and unromantic at the same time. He disliked the notion of a favourite colour or a song or a food. Everything is in flux, what you like now should not be confused with a marker of identity. It’s simply what you like now. It’ll pass. 

The more we persisted, the more calculated my movements became. To preserve our exchange, we had to avoid coming face to face. A premature hello could ruin what we were building. I began to stockpile groceries so I wouldn’t have to leave the house. I woke up early to throw out food scraps. The jungle had been demolished by then. Only the banyan tree stood tall. 

His last note read - 

Writing seems to be a form of schizophrenia. You look at a blank page and hallucinate a whole other world. Where do you derive the fodder for your hallucinations from?

To this, I said - 

The only difference between a schizophrenic and a writer is good grammar. I derive my inspiration from something very close to home. Wager a guess? 

I could feel my heart in my fingertips as I pushed the note through the door. He played a crescendo that night. We were picking up momentum.

*

A couple of weeks before Christmas, I sat at my desk, a pot of tea hissing on the stove while my hand moved across the notebook, the red pen making cuts so deep and angry that they bled into the next page. It was midnight, the street was silent other than the occasional dog fight that broke out only to be called off soon after by an elderly Goan auntie screaming at them in Konkani. I poured the hot amber liquid into a chipped mug, stirring in a spoonful of sugar so violently that steaming drops burned the skin of my palm. I gasped and held it under cold water in the sink. A soft tap-tap shook me out of my stupor. I looked around, confused. The sound returned, louder this time. It was coming from the common door. 

My heart started to beat like a hammer clanging on a stubborn nail. I turned off the faucet. I looked at my ratty pyjamas with a large hole around the crotch, my greasy hair that had been slicked into a bun that tilted to the left, curly tendrils falling haphazardly on the back of my neck. The house was in a state of disarray, crumpled pages lining the floor, unwashed dishes piling up on the kitchen counter. My interactions with the new neighbour had always been premeditated, compact, on mutually-understood terms. My narrative arc did not support an addendum at this hour. I stood there, trying not to move a muscle in my body, trying to ignore the panic that was setting in, as well as the rush of anger. I was not prepared for a sudden change, I was not prepared to deviate from the script. I had one more story to go, and then I would be ready to knock on his door. I stood there for what felt like hours, and then tiptoed to the back door and slammed it closed, as though to imply that I had only just reentered the house from the back garden. I told myself this was a believable farce. I turned off the light and lay still in bed until the morning crept in, just in case he knocked again. 

I was aware that something was changing between us, but I felt a resistance within. I needed to be the architect of whatever was to come. He was my blank page to colour, my story to write. That the tale could proceed without my prescience was too much to bear. I tried to visualise a scene that could bear the weight of the gratuitous buildup, that could lend a setting prominent and earth-shattering, yet sturdy and effortless, so that the tone could be maintained, so that the tension continued to heighten and so that we could find resolution in saving a straying turtle together. 

We both pretended that he had never knocked. But his comments on my stories became withdrawn, lifeless, mere appraisals of form and content. They lacked the lustre of before, when he read with eyes that were hungry to find bits of me hidden in the pages that I wrote him into. I knew that we had arrived at a point in the story where I needed to pitch a plot point to propel it forward. I had to make some kind of an advance, find some way of saying that our time was coming. So, around Christmas time, I said: 

Each of these stories contains my interpretation of who you are, or who you could be, if this world of ours was a little less boring and had more talking rabbits and missives from the trees. How does it feel to be someone’s muse? 

Now all my cards were on the table. My last story was nearly done. Soon we could take a step into the back-garden that was drenched in the moonlight, him with his flute and me with my stories. We could sit under the banyan tree and look at each other while we laid our offerings bare. 

Almost a week went by. Nothing arrived from his end. Several tiles were broken by the monkeys. More bills were sent our way. I punished the new neighbour by maintaining radio silence when he cooked. No more bobbing along to the Christmas songs blaring from my speaker. I began to linger in the back-garden, daring him to walk up to me. As it were, I left for Avó’s house for the holidays without receiving a response. 

*

Another Christmas passed where she whispered lovingly into my ear in a foreign tongue. She touched the cheeks of all the cousins as we strung together absurd sentences in a colonial dialect - one person’s proud legacy was another’s captivity. Each generation interacted with the same history differently, meaning was always in the eye of the beholder. 

Presents were unwrapped, large meals were consumed, rounds of Mafia were played with the younger ones. An aunt examined the split ends in my hair and recommended salons where I could get a nice trim. An uncle casually mentioned the son of an associate who liked to read books - John Grisham, mind you, and passed on his contact to me. My parents did not say a word to one another. They sat on opposite ends of the parlour and gave each other bitter glances that rang louder than any words they could have said. The new wife of a cousin, in an attempt to bond with me, asked me for tips on baking. I could never live up to the caricature these people had drawn of me. This wholesome children’s book writer who baked chocolate cake for her husband on Sundays while he read crime thrillers and complimented the highlights in her hair. 

After finishing the last of the Portuguese marzipan wine, the violins and guitars came out. Everyone gathered round the piano and I let myself into the balcony that overlooked the tops of unkempt tamarind trees, their leaves riddled by holes because the blight had set in. Their music sounded like a cacophony to me, the only sound I wanted to hear was that of a single flute breaking into a still night. Stemming from somewhere deep inside me was the knowledge that the story had flown off the radar, that I was going to return to a house that heralded the demise of reciprocity. I projected my foul mood onto Avó and translated her raspy Portuguese sentences into something that conveyed, you could never be loved. 

On the long drive back to the Menzes villa, I took the spiny coastal road, watching lumps of water grow overwhelmed with their own power and pitch onto the shore, waves thundering into climax in an instant only to send frothy carpets of whitewash across the sand.  I let the briny air singe the crinkled skin on my nose. My body felt like a balloon, perpetually at risk of floating away. Maybe this was what bodies did when in love. If this pining could be called love. If writing stories about someone could be called love. If feeling someone’s flute notes coursing through your blood could be called love. 

I pictured walking home and finding nothing. A jagged lump gnawed at my throat. My stomach flipped. I knew then that I couldn’t wait any longer, the story had already hurtled into the next act and I would have to either catch up or pull out. I pictured knocking at his door. I practised expressions in case my face forgot what to do and said to myself over and over again, our time is here, our time is here, our time is here. 

I entered through my gate and poked my head over the wall. The new neighbour’s scooter was gone. I exhaled, comforted by the thought of entering a house that was empty. If there was nothing waiting for me by the door, I could scream out loud without worrying about the gap in the wall that would take my misery to him. I unlocked the door with shaking fingers, ready to write the next few lines of our story in long rounded strokes. 

There was a note on the floor by the door. Not one, but two. 

The first one said - 

What an honour to be your muse. You’ve been on my mind since I moved here. I have to confess, I haven’t played the flute quite this much since I was a teenage boy. I suspect you have everything to do with this change. I must thank you for your stories. They’ve kept me warm in an otherwise lonely house. Would it be too outrageous of me to want to meet the author? 

My heart pounded wildly. And the next one - 

An emergency requires me to leave Goa tomorrow morning. I’m not sure I’ll be able to return. Can I come knocking at your door tonight? 

I choked out a cry of horror and pounded on the common door, the mass of my body dropping to my feet. I pounded the door hard until it rattled in its hinges, my body shaking in disbelief. This was not how the story went. We were never supposed to run out of time. What kind of a lazy plot device was that? What sort of unimaginative God was pulling the strings around here? 

I sat by the door for the rest of the night, listening for movement, raising my hand every few minutes to knock at the closed door, the one I could have opened weeks ago, when it contained the full bloom of possibilities. Now the denouement had snuck up on me and there was no backspace key, no way to rewrite this section or leave editorial comments. No, some things in life could only be lived through once. 

The stack of pages that contained the final story sat serenely on the mahogany desk. I picked it up and reread it, and the neighbour’s face floated into my mind, his tongue lightly clamped between his teeth as he gave a half-smile. Mischievous, pure. There he was, in the very air around me. I could reel him into any story I wanted. I lifted my hand but let it fall without my knuckles hitting the door. 

Morning came, the poi sellers on their bicycles tooted their horns. I pushed my hair behind my ears and lifted myself up off the ground. There was a chill in the air. I shivered as my bare feet hit the damp mud on the driveway. The seller wrapped two paos and two pois in a newspaper. My gaze wandered to the porch on the other side of the villa, the locked door, the drawn curtains. All silent. I handed over a twenty rupee note and walked back to my side of the house, latching the gate behind me so the stray dogs couldn’t get in. 

***

About the Author:

Aishwarya Shah is a screenwriter and journalist from India who lives in Indonesia for part of the year. She writes for the documentary series Earth Speed. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The Culture-ist, Goa.me, Gemtrack Travel and she has been featured on The Meaningful Travelers podcast. Her creative fiction has been published by Angime Magazine.