Days with Fleas in My Ears

We had a peculiar neighbour. When I say peculiar, it goes to such an extent where I used to run away from his peculiarity of sustained high-pitched tone of whining. He has something or the other always to clutch at. Either it is about the other neighbour's black cat every morning he looks at first when he opens his main door, or about the darned nuisance created by the songbirds or the cock crows waking him up early morning. He even complains about the owls blasting in and fracturing his silent nights with their unholy hoots, invariably followed by a proverbial death news the following day.

The other day he happened along again. This time it was a deluge about the irresponsibility of the other neighbour lady on her black tomcat's behaviour. He saw the "darned thing" go by his window with a dead robin in his mouth. As usual, he complained to the owner of the cat. She just laughed it off saying, ''The cat's just acting naturally. He's doing what God created it to do!'' Needless to mention, he didn't like her in-one-ear and out-the-other attitude towards the carnage that the beast was wreaking. Not only it ended over there but gave him a flea in his ear reminding a complaint he once made over the cacophonic chirping that begins at the wee hours and never relents until eventide. And she had sealed it up and walked off saying, "Good for your sleep!"

That event irritated him and he kept it with all intensity and vented the whole hot air out on me, thanks to the patient hearing I keep wearing.

I remember once he complained about the bloody birds returning in April from down south to make the month the "cruellest" as T. S. Eliot opined. For him, the season of November to March provides him unbridled peace—no noisy birds, snowy and sleepy neighbourhoods, less traffic and what not....!

Normally, people in Canada are eagerly waiting to get rid of the winter and welcome the advent of spring. All living creatures show up their heads more on the streets after a long hibernation by the beginning of April. Children are waiting for Victoria Day to blow up the whole stock of their firecrackers, without any prior permission. Imagine the plight of a neighbour who is vigilant in his sleep also as to who flies over his house. He opens his door and comes out on the night of Victoria Day shouting, ''Who the hell on earth are bombing the night?'' No sooner he finds our children out than he creeps in, shutting the door.

When all are heading for outing and camping, there is my neighbour complaining about the songbirds who ate up his blueberries and then poop prodigiously on his white car, forcing him to swab stoutly to get that stuff off. And I'm thinking of making an underground passage starting right down from my living room to the next junction to escape an insidious trap of listening to my neighbour's complaints that delay my office trips.