We vocalise that good fences make good neighbours but since most of us inhabit apartments and penthouses with closed doors this might not apply.

As I received an order from the Talabat driver it struck my attention how our day’s society has turned out to be all self-centred. I was hoisted in the UAE all my life and way back our neighbours were like a close-knit family.

With infants gushing around, dirtying the floor, banging the floors, and making all sorts of noise, pulling, dragging each other, pushing and kicking, yelling at the top of their lungs, and full of music those were those evocative days I had. I even had a chat with my colleague on this the other day as to how things have changed. Will we ever get back to those good old days, I ask him? We can only hallucinate. There were times when neighbours used to visit each other and get to know each other and those days if anything happened to anyone that would have been every neighbour’s problem.

With credence building up my dad and mum used to even cook something delicious for our neighbours and serve them. Celebrations like Diwali and Christmas are something that I will always sustain in my memory.

Reminiscing about the time I once sang a song in front of the whole throng enticing the onlookers with the song “I am on the Top of the World”.

Those days I was one of the naughtiest kids when our parents used to head to the office toiling day and night but we had no worries unlike now. Yes, we are grown-ups and things have changed but at times I ask myself what has happened now? Our next-door neighbours do not know us and it’s just their life behind closed doors. Luckily my wife is very happy to get introduced to a neighbour living close by recently.

Today sadly, the love of neighbours is diminishing, each of us abhors to commingle and does not want to fall prey to their fancies or getting into trouble as our life is already filled with tensity, and trouble. Uff! Intolerable and unapproachable with myriad kinds of thinking patterns and storms.

A good neighbour is someone who respects other people and helps if necessary. But these are rare and some don’t even know who the neighbours are next door.

Mathew Litty,
Dubai