I also learnt that you couldn't get away with much unless the person in question was Mr Ramesh Chandiramani, our Sindhi watchman-bashing neighbour. Today, he is no more but when he was alive he used to generally terrorise everyone. One day what happened is that the kids from the building wrote on his door: "Ramesh is too tall for his boots". "Ramesh stinks". He was very upset and decided to try a Sherlock Holmes-method of finding the culprit. For the next one week, he was pouncing on the kids with an autograph book in his hand, saying, "Isme zara sign karna. Kuch likh na yaar." All in an attempt to tally handwriting.

We may not have loved each other very much -- specially the naughty children in the building -- but we really loved animals. In fact, no one loved their pets more than the famous Saprus from the film industry -- Tej, Preeti and Rima Rakesh Nath (Saajan, Dil Tera Ashiq Hai). They too were my neighbours. Sapru Unclehad three sons. Two are now living in Lokhandwala, but my neighbour and good friend, Raj, is still here. He loves to keep dogs. Over the past 20 years, I don't know how many dogs he has had but all of them have either run away or died. But he keeps getting new dogs with new enthusiasm. Now he has two dogs who are very ferocious and very well toilet trained. They go and shit outside everyone else's house, but his. Once the building members got together to talk to him. This is a honest-to-God conversation that took place between Raj, on the second floor, and the members on the ground floor, to the sound of the dogs barking. "Beta apne kutton ko sambhalo, woh titti karte hain," they said. He replied, "Uncle you come and talk to them. I have told them twice but they don't listen to me. Meri bhasha nahi samajhte hain."

But the message of loving animals was first driven home to me when I was listening in at a building meeting -- held every Sunday morning in the gurkha's kholi. Poor man, hiskholi was a place where raat ko daru pekay, he was `shupposed to shleep'. But on Sunday mornings he would have to wake up early because the building meeting was held there. Generally, the meetings were rather heated. You could hear shouting like, `Paani wahan se leak hota hai' or `Mein bolta hoon kiske sandaas se leak hota hai?' To which someone would say, "You shut up. Apko kuch nahi maloom hain. Sandaas, sandaas karte rehte hain." One time, the proceedings went absolutely haywire. A rat showed up and refused to leave. Suddenly everyone was on his or her chairs. Two of the men bravely tried to kill the rat when one of the society members started shouting, "It's cruelty to animals." That's when I learnt that you don't let the cat out of the bag unless you are ready to adopt the rat.

The names of the characters have not been changed to protect my innocence