As anyone will tell you, I'm a very reasonable person (ahem) but can hold an argument with the best of them, even if my position is tenuous to stay to the least. That's why I'm relishing the residents' meetings at our apartment complex next week... Since learning that a couple of people 'complained' that we had a dog in the building - which is completely within the rules - and getting a copy of the rule book handed to me, I spoke with the secretary (I'm not giving it an upper case S) of the residents' committee to address her concerns. She launched into me with a tirade of comments, mainly aimed at the fact that the building manager doesn't follow the rules and we should not have the dog in the 'common areas.' In a nutshell, we're allowed to have the dog but not take her on the landscaped areas or the kids' play area; no problem. We can, however, walk any pet (iguana, elephant, dog, or cat) around the periphery of the building, which in our case is a driveway. She didn't seem to know that. Nor did she seem to agree with it. Tough. They're your rules, baby, and if you don't like it, it's your own doing. By the end of the conversation, my wily PR ways and sugary sweet apologies for not having known the rules had got her onside, but you knew it wasn't going to go away.
Fast forward a few days, I am exercising my dog - and my prerogative - around the 'periphery of the building' and who announces herself to me, but ms secretary. 'So, you've decided to walk your dog around here...' I was all polite and very happy to reiterate the rules to her and remind her that I was doing nothing wrong. In fact, many of their 'rules' area quite blatantly ignored, particularly where kids are concerned, but I guess the dog threw them, as no-one has had one here for four years, as I keep being reminded. She advised me that she'd had now two complaints - I'm not sure if complaints are just calls, whatever - about the situation and that it would be raised at the, wait for it, AGM on August 30th. What a great opportunity for me to get up and have a good old fashioned argument with a bunch of people who clearly don't know their own rules, hate confrontation (hence her blaming the building manager when I called her), and can't make a decision to save their lives. Excellent.
While chatting to the frosty cow, sorry, secretary, a half dozen squealing infants on bikes came tear-arsing past us on the driveway, as if to illustrate my next point, 'well,' I said, 'the rules quite clearly state that kids shouldn't ride cycles or rollerskates on the driveway, but they do....' I'm not sure when the rules were written, but clearly rollerskates were in and skateboards were a thing of the future...
She invited me to attend the meeting - well, I couldn't refuse - and I was quick to call the building manager to check the time it started, and add on four hours for the usual tardiness of people. He already knew that it was on the agenda as 'secretary' had called him yesterday. I haven't told him yet that she blames him for not explaining the rules thoroughly - but I will, eventually, to get him more onside - but I did raise a few issues of my own with the rules, for example, they state that pets can't go in the lift, but the four times a day that I carry Mitzie up and down the stairs, I nearly have an accident over the multitude of bikes stored in the stairwells. Surely that's a fire hazard!!!
And there are more, don't even get me started on the rule that states your laundry shouldn't be hung in public view... hello, THIS IS INDIA! Laundry is EVERYWHERE on public view.
The building manager is going to call her again, but I reckon he's got no balls and she will eat him for breakfast; he was quite keen to get me to speak directly with her the other day, proving that point. I have many aces up my sleeve, and one I shared with the building manager when he told me that most Embassy properties DON'T allow dogs... Erm, well my friend, the OWNER of the company, lives in an Embassy property AND has dogs AND walks them round the building AND I'm quite sure he doesn't take the stairs... SILENCE.
On a more positive note, having Mitzie has made me realize how nice it would be to live in a little house with a picket fence where I could walk freely outside without being chased by packs of wild dogs, sink up to my knees in mud on an unpaved road, or get accosted by frosty cows with nothing better to do that recite, incorrectly, the rule book. So, we are looking to move to a 'gated community,' and I shudder when I say this because for the last nearly three years I have been denegrading people who do, labeling them as 'softies' who don't want to see the real India.... Ok, so maybe I'm a softie now. I may draw the line at Palm Meadows, which is the ultimate Floridian living on the outskirts of Bangalore, complete with all mod cons, supermarkets, restaurants, and so much that you literally NEVER need to leave. But it would be nice to have a little two up, two down, for the bitch and us.
To be continued...
