Home Sweet Home – A Lady’s Balcony, South Delhi
Her private oasis.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
She’s readily agreed to give The Delhi Walla a guided tour of her pleasing balcony, but with a condition. No snapping her face photos, so she can remain anonymous. For a very good reason that is disclosed later in this dispatch.
At this very moment she is gesturing towards the frangipani on her charming balcony, “that I got from friends who recently moved to Buenos Aires,” she explains.
“And, yes, I know it’s strange… no flowers in it. And they’re blooming just about everywhere in Delhi except right here.”
As a designer with her own label, she’s furnished her south Delhi perch with an elegant wooden breakfast table, along with a cane chair padded with jute grass. “I feel so much more connected with the world, plonked down in that chair.”
Here time passes gentle for her. She’ll perchance catch the cry of peacocks in the nearby park while perhaps idly watching kabadiwallas come and go on their bicycles. “This morning while watering the plants, the akhbar-walla was throwing the newspaper in the flat above mine… I felt it was about to hit my head instead.” She stepped back in alarm but the newspaper landed in the right balcony.
Now, with the approach of winter, the lady plans to spend even more time on her balcony, without a pollution mask. “My neighbours always wear them when stepping outside, but I somehow think it detracts from the experience.”
Balcony life does entail certain drawbacks. She feels she’s being watched by her neighbours. But, at the same time, she watches them, too, out there on their balconies.
That’s why the lady prefers anonymity in this modest exposé. Laughing broadly, she explains: “I don’t want my neighbours to recognise me. And then conclude that maybe I’m snooping a bit into their lives. Which I do.”
On her perch
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