Besides coming across as always tipsy and saying something borderline hilarious every time I meet him, he looks like an owl. His son looks like a sparrow, and a really nervous one at that, so I'm guessing it doesn't run in the family. This man, my neighbour, he once had to face Puja's wrath in my balcony. She was yelling at some random guy for indeterminate reasons, and it was really late at night so she thought no one was around. Somewhere in the midst of all the profanity she was letting loose he popped up from behind his living room's curtains (it adjoins our balcony) and calmly said, whiskey glass in hand, thoda dheere se, beta.

He's always in unbuttoned shirts or open-necked garments, no tie, even with a blazer. That's how I noticed this funny scar-like thing on his chest just below his neck. It's brown and leathery and very intriguing because it's like a splotchy upside-down pentagon; almost makes him look like a middle-aged owlish superhero in disguise. I went the longest time without asking about it because it was nicer to come up with theories on my own, but after a year or so the tell-me-why tendency took over and I asked. This was right after the day in the elevator when he told me that Raymond Chandler was too fancy a name for someone who wrote badass detective novels. He always says things like that. So this time I waited for another epiphany, only he said, oh, it's a keloid.

A what?

A keloid, he said. It started out as a scar or something, and then he couldn't stop scratching it, and it grew and it spread...

Like a tumour? I was pretty excited by now.

Almost. But it's benign (Exit excitement, stage left). And it itches if it comes in contact with skin (Exit open shirt mystery, should have thought of this earlier).

Interesting enough?

Yes, I said, but I was just being polite. And that, to summarise, is why I don't like talking too much. Things of epic proportion are shaved down till they become keloids. What a term.