30 things that cause unease in Mumbai's gated communities

A non-exhaustive list

TW: suicide mention. Picture below taken from Johnny Miller’s ‘Unequal Scenes’ project.

• Stray dogs with a mean glint in their eye

• Stray cats who are listless

• Strays (general)

• Maintenance fees

• Off-duty chauffeurs who are lounging about a little too freely

• Intercoms that ring for half a minute

• Lack of professional ambition or desire to climb socially

• Balconies with dying plants

• Balconies with thriving plants

• Walkers and joggers who don’t stick to the walking and jogging lanes, respectively

• Vegetable waalas who don’t have patience for bargaining

• Dhobi waalas who try to make conversation

• Insufficiently deferential lift men

• Anti-nationalism

• Residents who unexpectedly lose a lot of weight

• Unsanctioned flowers growing in the hedges

• When the guard at the gate fails to clock you as a long-time resident by your face, clothes, accent, and entitlement, and politely asks for your flat number

• Mosquito control fumigation

• Mosquitoes

• When the domestic worker with two children and two in-laws and a 1-hour window in which to return home and collect water before the water gets switched off says “No, thanks” to one more job at one more flat

• Parents who don’t hold a grudge against the child that has hurt their child

• Being in the lift at the same time as a small dog

• Delivery men who get the flat number wrong

• The loud annoying noise of an excavator machine, early in the morning, tearing down the neighbouring slum

• Suicides from high floors that land neatly onto the flower beds

• Windows whose curtains are drawn closed at all times

• Unused parking spaces

• Divorce and separation

• Intercoms that ring on and on, endlessly, their toneless shrieks echoing off the walls of the fire escape, filling the listener with a sense of doom

• Low turnout at the Holi celebration

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