Slow Death Of Community Living

Living together in a society, to go to school, to go to work, to enjoy recreation and to be active is the charm of community living. A small social unit of people who have common interests, similar kind of ideologies and demographics come together to enjoy and share ups and downs of life is the beauty of community living.

I remember when I was young, I and my friends would go out to play in our society lawn in the evenings after school, we would keep playing till it was dark and then we were supposed to go back home. Evening time was like fish market in our society, from small kids, to young children, to adults and senior citizens would be out, playing, chatting in a group, walking and having fun. There were no recreational facilities in the apartments, we had to make our own games and entertain ourselves. And when there would be power cuts, the whole society would be out of their houses, people of all age groups, laughing and enjoying; I never realised that I could easily live without power for 2-3 hours.

I remember, we children used to collect funds from each house, whatever the residents would contribute to make preparations for the upcoming festivals. We would celebrate all festivals with so much enthusiasm and energy that our parents would have to say, “It’s enough now”. I would rather say, each day was a festival for me back then and it wasn’t enough.

Many of us would have lived this kind of community life in our childhood days. I wonder sometimes, we are the same, society lawns are the same, evenings are the same, recreational facilities are better, nature is still beautiful, hours of the day are same, then what has happened that community living has changed over the years. The only answer I can find is: our attitude. We cannot blame time, we cannot blame facilities and we cannot blame profession. We are so engrossed in our own selves, we are so involved in our small nuclear families, we prefer reel and screen time rather than real, our preferences have changed that we have forgotten the joys of community living.

I realised that few things haven’t changed as I go out for my daily evening walks; I still see grandparents with their young grand children in the parks and swing areas, (there are caretakers with small children also), I see small kids running around, fighting and playing with each other. I see young children of the age group of 10-13 years doing something or the other. I see senior citizens doing their daily walk to keep themselves healthy and fit, senior citizens sitting and chatting in the park, my daughter named it Oldies (Budda) Park.

But, definitely I don’t see much of young adults, it is like people from the age group of 25-50 are almost missing from community life, though they live in a community. There are many faces that I see only during festivals and other occasions that are celebrated together in the society. The societies these days have so much facilities. There is swimming pool but I hardly see people other than kids using it during vacations, gym but very few faces are seen in the gym, club house which is mostly vacant other than a guard sitting outside, reading room which is mostly unused and the irony is, yet we want to live in a society with all the facilities.

The question is not whether the society has facilities or not, the question is not whether the society celebrates festivals or not, the question is why we are not using these facilities? why we don’t come out in the evenings? why we don’t live and enjoy community life? Again I could find only one answer: our mind-set. People find enjoyment in weekends rather than enjoyment every day.

Life has become so busy, or should I say we have made it busy ourselves. There is no time for daily evening walks, evening life, or should I say we don’t want to take out time for evening walks. Should I say evening life has changed to night life; the answers are there with each one of you. There is one answer with me and that is: in all this chaos that happens with each one us, community life is a saviour, it is a stress relief medicine which is cost free. Evening walks, eating ice-creams after dinner, sitting in the garden singing or playing Antakshari, playing badminton in the night under minimum light, even watching reels on mobile together, sharing your joys and sorrow with community friends is the magic of society life. It gives a break from the loneliness that surrounds us within and outside.

I wish, with this article, my readers go back to the days of enjoyment and fun of community life and re-live those days and make it possible in their future days. Community living is fun and enjoyment, collective responsibility of residents towards each other and recreation not for one day but for every day. Right now community living is in endangered category and we must work together before it becomes extinct.

Disclaimer: These are purely my views on community life with no intention to hurt anybody’s emotion.