Only the temple bell rings

Villagers don’t have doorbells. They don’t need them. They have dogs who bark when a stranger approaches the house. Everyone else simply walks in through the door, which is left open all hours of the day and closed only at night.

My doorbell has grown rusty from disuse.

Despite my urgings, nobody rings it, though some have pressed the switch simply for the novelty of hearing a bell ring inside.

It’s a bell, is it? a neighbour asked me in some wonder. But why do you need a bell? Don’t’ you hear the gate creak when someone enters?

At least she came in through the gate, unlike her son who once simply leapt over the wall and surprised me in my nightclothes.

Most people just stand at the gate and keep calling my name till I am forced to drop everything and pop my head out of a window to ask, in exasperation: What?

Most exasperating of all is Babuli, who some would call the village idiot.

Oye! - he’ll shout. And if you don’t respond in exactly thirty seconds, he’ll shout it again, louder still: Oye! And keep shouting the word till someone appears at the door.

I’m not one of your buffaloes, Babuli – once I told him crossly.

He looked abashed. But the next time he came round he was shouting it again: Oye!

Sometimes I miss the sound of the bell ringing in what was once my home in the city. I miss the way people used to stand patiently outside till you opened the door. I miss peeping through the peephole to see who it is. If the visitor is unwelcome, I miss most of all not answering the doorbell and watching the person quietly go away.