Having spent the first 15 years of my life in a tea estate, I never quite knew what a neighbour was.AdvertisementWe lived in a cosy, tin-roofed cottage with a huge compound surrounded by rows of lush green tea bushes, which were shaded by the comforting branches of sprawling siris trees. The serenity of the ambience was broken only by the muffled, rhythmic thumping and churning of the CTC machines in the tea factory. There were people around – the gardeners, watchmen, tea leaf pluckers, but no neighbours. Anyone familiar with the hierarchical social structure of a tea garden will understand.When I was 15 years old, we settled down in our new house that my father built in Siliguri. This was in the early 1980s. Siliguri was a small, comfortable town with a mixed population of a lakh, maybe a little more, thriving on the three Ts: Tea, Timber and Tourists. The neighbourhood (or para in Bengali) that we settled in had a sleepy ambience. Almost everyone knew everyone.Also Read | Who’s my neighbour: CR Park and Kalkaji together make the perfect metaphor for Delhi. I live at the junction of bothAdvertisementEvery house had a patch of land in front where brightly coloured flowers encircled grassy patches, often with a tiny kitchen garden in the middle. The walls were low, and neighbours shouted warm greetings to each other, sometimes sharing news of the weather or cricket scores from radio commentaries. There was no TV, only a modest local Bengali newspaper. Landline phones were seen only as a necessity, and All India Radio, Siliguri, was our only connection to the world.Every evening, people took their evening strolls in the neighbourhood lanes, sometimes pushing a perambulator with a toddler whose curious eyes looked around. People nodded at each other, laughed and talked unguardedly, not withholding personal queries. Siliguri was not urbanised enough at the time for people to talk without speaking. Some of our neighbours were old family acquaintances, and every weekend, my father’s old friends spent long evenings together. Occasionally, there would be squabbles, with a considerable degree of yelling and shouting. But things seemed to resolve on their own a few days later.Came the 1990s, and life changed beyond expectations, leaving a marked influence on a growing city like Siliguri. 24-hour TV sent lifestyles haywire. Life sneaked indoors from the world outside. Neighbours seldom visited each other, and nearly a decade later, the internet and social media led to the ultimate demise of the para-life. Neighbours now became acquaintances. Loud and friendly chatter turned into polite exchanges. Meanwhile, my father passed away, and circAlso Read | Who’s my neighbour: CR Park and Kalkaji together make the perfect metaphor for Delhi. I live at the junction of bothumstances led us to a gated complex in a different locality of the town.We prepared ourselves for our future in the gated community, presumably cold and indifferent, with daily life reduced to procedural routines rather than care-free, independent existence. We were quite wary of what lay ahead. So were the other new residents who had also just moved in. The apprehension and caution that we all felt led to a sense of companionship driven more by circumstances than by choice. Soon, we began to get along well.Six months later, one of our new neighbours, a 54-year-old teacher, suffered a stroke. His children were away studying in colleges far from Siliguri. In a rare show of solidarity, all apartment owners rushed to help. Everyone did whatever they could to extend their support. He went through bypass surgery, but recovered well. This incident deepened the bond among the new residents, and the life that followed was nothing we remotely expected.Ours is a relatively small complex with 51 apartments. Residents include teachers, bankers, government officials, judges and businessmen. We socialise on a daily basis, chatting, playing badminton, while the kids cycle in the driveways. Some take an interest in gardening, while others look after the maintenance of the complex. Soon, we formed a housing committee of sorts, which also became our social platform. And WhatsApp plays a big role in our socialising. Text messages could point out a problem (such as a leaking pipe), and they could be traffic alerts, like:“Please avoid Station Feeder Road – huge jam!”you may likeSometimes a resident has happy news to share – and the good wishes keep following. The Annual General Meeting cum Lunch is a big event, strengthening the neighbourhood vibes.It would be foolish to claim that the bond among residents is intimate. The relationships are obviously of a secondary nature. The bonhomie does not reach personal, let alone intimate, levels. But it is the feeling of belonging to a shared space that makes life in our gated community so unique. In this age of social alienation and isolation, this is more than one could ask for.The writer heads the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, Siliguri College