The Society Aunty-Uncle Phenomenon

Welcome to my second post. Like the first post, it is pest-ridden.

If, as I suspect is the case, my celebrity status is fertile enough that many of you have kept up with my movements this year, then you all know I moved back home with my parents in August this year. In my childhood apartment complex of Chennai remain zero of the bosom friends with whom I shared long walks and nail polish and furtive secrets. So when I moved back, my only friends in the complex were my parents — who are now old enough to be my children. So one could say I have no millennial/Gen-Z ties in this building anymore.

This means I care very little about any prevailing opinion of me. And this means I can finally write about the scathing indignities foisted upon teenagers in this and many buildings of this format (residential areas populated by idle conservative uncles and aunties who, by some disastrous stroke of luck, have discovered the possibilities of an email chain). Many of these Boomer aunties and uncles (and their equally-criminal 45-year-old children) are the reason for my cunning youth and vitality in teenage years, thanks to the effort spent in thwarting the participation of their noses in my business.

Once, someone made a noise complaint against my house backed up by the auxiliary complaint that “too many shoes were left outside the house.” Like, by my door, where people customarily leave their footwear. Another time, residents two floors above ours instructed their maid, who also came to our house, to come to their house first because they didn’t know if we ate meat and hence objected to the maid touching our vessels before touching theirs. (Should I egg their house?) Another time, in a stunning display of how parents lobotomize their children, one of the building’s ten-year-old girls ran into me returning from the store with noodles and, unsolicited, told me that “noodles are bad for you. You shouldn’t eat them.” You’re bad for me too, you little snooty rat, and given the chance, I’d cook you too!

So imagine my delight when I discovered the existence of an apartment owners’ email chain rife with the feverish meltdowns of the 45-65 age group concerning kids, snakes, roaches, construction, the elevator, pets riding the elevator (odor-related no-no), the domestic help riding the elevator (class hierarchy-related no-no), and the merits of religious rituals that put the owner of Apartment 1B into an ecstatic trance but the owner of Apartment 5E into a torrential rage.

“This,” I thought as I pored over the emails that my dad ignores. “This email chain is my drug of choice. The source of my long-awaited vengeance.” You see, so far I’d thought it was important to respect old strangers even if their thoughts and ideas and philosophies left a foul taste in my mouth. The stench of this particular custom is lasting, like the memory of being told by some wrinkly idiot how many centimeters of her calf a 16-year-old girl can have on display before the males in the area caught on fire. But, having come to my senses, I have learnt that my respect can be earned! And withdrawn! At my discretion! What a concept. (I also now know that giving a shit can be a non-renewable resource and that I don’t have to exploit it for strangers whose only connection with my life is their ultimately useless opinion of it.)

Which is why my newfound appreciation for this email chain exists. It’s proved beyond a doubt that all my suspicions about this worm population disguised as a suburban-residential demographic are correct. And now all look upon me — it is now my nose that does the participating and my finger that does the pointing.

For it is the loudest, wealthiest voices with the most unhinged, small-minded, small-hearted opinions — these people, who I presume have some kind of eminent standing in their jobs and families, passionately write that the help should be fined for taking the wrong elevator; that pet-owners should throw their dogs out for the crime of pooping; that the kids’ football should be taken away; that a man who stubbornly rings an unnecessarily loud temple bell at 6 a.m. is actually a really cool guy; that the fatal aspect of COVID-19 is actually a bacteria and we should all be inhaling coffee to combat it. All these emails are of course drooling with entitlement and loserdom. Clearly no one in the privilege-ridden lives of these people has taken the trouble to say that “actually, good sir, good madam, you suck a lot! Please pipe down!”

Look. All I am saying is that I know bullying is wrong….but!

Anyway, knowing that these people have worms in their brains is a welcome retribution for me, and slandering the residents of this building is honestly a Hall of Fame bucket list item. The worst that could happen is that one of them sniffs this newsletter out and complains to my parents, which would just make me laugh like a hyena.

Finally, I know I should be the bigger person. But. Should I egg some houses? Be honest. Be brave.

An excerpt from a tasty email.

An interesting video from The Swaddle tangentially related to this: