Car Reverse. Character Upside Down

Thanks to IT companies, call centres and BPO’s for giving us a horde of these English speaking rustics.
For all the rocket science that they dabble with, they don’t need to be choosy about whom they take in. Anyone with some training can do the job of copy paste.
So a company recruits a slum dweller for want of resources. It gives him the kind of money that he has never seen before. With that he goes to jazzy malls, buys branded clothes and accessories and drives an imported car. And what about his core? His culture? That does not change. He remains what he is. The scum of earth. And his low culture becomes all the worse, now mixed with the arrogance of new money.
The trouble with such people is they pick up confidence as they go along.

Talking loudly into mobile phones in public, using the F word in every sentence, partying, singing, dancing late into the night in an apartment building not caring about the disturbance caused to neighbours, honking away to glory in a traffic jam...to mention a few. All of them having the common attitude of “It’s your problem, not mine”.

The latest thing causing vexation to my spirit is this jackass who wakes up the whole neighbourhood every night in order to proclaim that he has a car and feels no shame to face his neighbours the next morning.

Warning: This is a crib blog (after the longest while, therefore pardonable).

I live in a very quiet street. In a residential area. South Bangalore. Neat houses. Working men and women, homemakers, old people, children and infants dwell in these neat houses. Slumber comes upon them after 9 in the night.

Every night, jolting everybody out of their rest comes this car, a white swift, to this house just opposite mine. The owner of the car (and the house) starts driving in the reverse. This is accompanied by a tune that is as unbearable as the rubbing of fingernails on a metal surface. The music or tune is very unpleasant in itself – it’s just continuous beeping like that of an ambulance van. And then on top of it, this civilised fellow insists on parking the car with a precision that’s used in manufacturing electronic chips.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth - some 10 times until the car is parked exactly parallel to the wall and exactly six inches away from the wall. This, in the night, at a time when there is not a sound to be heard in a really quiet neighbourhood.

Sometimes he comes at 9, sometimes at 11, sometimes at 12.

The whole street is empty. There isn’t a single soul in sight. Who is he trying to warn with that annoying sound? What purpose does it serve? Does he even pause to give it a thought?
Why should all of us wake up to hear this uncouth fellow’s proclamation to the world about his car?

I put up with this disturbance for 8 months. One day he came at 2 in the night. The beeping started and I woke from my sleep with a start.

I waited and waited and waited for the beeping to stop. But no. He did not care. He did not care that it was 2 in the night and every soul in the neighbourhood was sleeping without an exception. That old men and young children, resting after a tired day would be rudely shaken out of their sleep. He parked with the same precision as always and having awakened everybody, he went in to catch his share of sleep.

That was the last straw. The next day, as I was returning home, this pig was parking. Addressing him, I asked if I could make a request. He looked up.
“Can you please turn off the music after 9 O clock?”
“NO. I CANT”
“You are waking up the whole neighbourhood everyday”
“I CANT HELP IT”
“I am sure if you take the car to a mechanic, he will do something about it; reduce the volume or something...”
“YOU CANT ASK ME TO DO THAT. I AM A PERMANENT RESIDENT OF THIS PLACE. AND I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE”
He glared at me angrily as if I had offended him!

“THANKS FOR YOUR COOPERATION” said I and walked in calling him a bastard for the 100th time under my breath.

The beeping continues. So does the gnashing of my teeth.
These are times when I wish I was James Bond and had the license to kill. Or that we had a Hitler in our midst.
India is too free a country; it has one billion plus people with freedom and without responsibility and that's a case for disaster; democracy? huh, more like demo-crazy!