Balcony

I love the balcony. The tiny platform, projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, has seen many a tale unfold for mankind. My own house in Calcutta didn’t have one, but the rooms that I lived in subsequently, had balconies. When I was working near Delhi in an ad agency, I lived in a top floor room having a west-facing balcony floored with marble. I spent close to six months in that room, throughout autumn, winter and spring. After that, I lived in institute accommodation in the middle of a wilderness about fifty kilometres from Delhi. The campus was surrounded by hills in all directions, and was a sight for sore eyes from the monsoon season, through winter, till spring. I exclude the summer months as it is difficult to distinguish this place from the Kalahari Desert during that time. In this place, I lived on a first floor room with an east-facing balcony for two and a half years.

It was in Gurgaon, bordering Delhi in the South, that I was employed as a writer in an advertisement agency for two months, after which, I stopped going to office, and eventually stopped receiving all phone calls from it. The room I lived in during that period had a small balcony for two people to squeeze in. Albeit the size, the balcony used to be like an observation deck for me. I used to sit there, on its floor, often with a cup of tea and see the stream of life as the day began in the morning, progressed into noon, sliding slowly into the happy hours of the evening, and ending quietly at night.

In autumn, during the festival of lights, the balcony was the vantage point from which we viewed the magnificent fireworks in the night sky, and the joyous merriment of families out on the streets with firecrackers and sweets. During winter nights, when there was frequent load-shedding, the dense fog came in from the open balcony door kissing my cheeks and surrounding me in its blanket. In spring, when the birds started their chirping, often sitting on the clothesline on the balcony and dropping the unmentionables on my wet clothes, there came curious beetles to visit me and their red dotted patterns on the white marble floor were, at least visually, like strawberry and cream.

But I was glad that, that part of my journey was over before the hit of the summer months. Bearing the heat during a power cut, on the top floor where the only thing between me and the burning sun would be a thin layer of brick and mortar would have melted all the precious white of my brain.

I next journeyed southwards, by about fifty kilometres. It was an institute for doing scientific research unofficially run by Bengalis (much like myself). It was in the middle of bandit country, the Aravalli Hills. The forests, as legend has it, are infested with thieves and robbers. The forests are also home to a variety of wildlife, including leopards (and also scorpions and snakes)! The place is rife with ridiculous incidents of bank vehicles hijacked by robbers, wealthy looking people kidnapped for money and jewellery, and toll gate officials shot in the head after a dispute over meagre toll charges.

In this exciting, perilous country still lives a band of a few hundred physically underdeveloped individuals (who don’t stand a chance even against a minor attack by tiny scorpions), doing research. This is where I lived for two and a half year by the skin of my teeth, but not so much out of fear of unexpected attack by man or beast, as out of shear boredom.

The first floor room I occupied had a balcony that looked out towards the main institute building straight ahead, and the forest on the right. I have spent many an evening (again) sipping tea, and contemplating about my non-existent future, on this balcony. The most beautiful time of the year was monsoon, when torrential rain fell from the heavens like a screaming, rebellious adolescent wanting to break free from the oppression of the terribly hot summer months. During the few months that it rained, the trees became green and the waxy leaves sparkled when the Sun broke in through the clouds. The neem tree, standing right outside the balcony, used to humbly lower its green branches for me to touch, when I was sore after a bad week’s work in the culture lab. The smell of the wet earth was like a drug that I used to draw vigorously into my lungs while I lay on my bed, looking out the open door of the balcony. The rain disobediently lashed at everything in the room, but I didn’t mind, because that was exactly what I wanted to do, to throw contaminated petri dishes at the oppressive lab technicians and scream like a rebellious adolescent at their incompetence. Then, during winter, it was the fog again, like the heavens, touching us, to tell us that all was well, and that we could continue our reckless, drunken revelry and that we deserved it and would not be punished for it.

It is difficult to accurately describe the feeling or the outburst of emotions that happen when one stands on the balcony with the hands on the parapet, and why it cannot be compared to sticking out one’s head from a window like a dog, or one’s tongue through the grille like a convict. But you can try to imagine, and once in a while sit there on a balcony and (again) sip some tea, and let the thoughts flow away with the breeze into the starry night.

Dwaipayan Adhya