My sister’s apartment in Hyderabad where I am staying for a few days now has a balcony with a beautiful and interesting view. We live in the first floor of a thirty floor apartment block. Being closer the the ground, you get to seen and enjoy all the trees and grass that is planted in between the apartment blocks. My sister mentioned that it was this precise reason, the need to have some greenery in her life everyday,     that she decided to go for the first floor. And I can’t disagree. If the apartment would have been any higher floors, the presence of the greenery would be out of sight and hence out of mind.

Nevertheless, like all high rise apartments, the majority of the balcony’s view is blocked by the neighboring apartment block. A plethora of apartment balconies stare back at me, most of them with wet cloths hanging from wires trying in vain to dry in the wet August weather. Many balconies also have plant life in them, most of the plants protruding out of the railings of their balcony rails. A few of the balconies seem empty, devoid of any signs of life. You can almost always see pigeon’s flying around from one balcony to another in their endless pursuit of a better place to sit.

From time to time, balconies are also populated with a variety of people. You can sometimes see a young bachelor with his headphones on, smiling and talking into it probably to his love interest. There are women of the house coming out to put the wet cloths on the line, too busy with the household chores to notice the view from their balcony. There are a few balconies where you can find old couple sitting. They are the ones those seem to enjoy the view, mostly in silence. They probably have run out of things to talk or are old enough to be comfortable with silence.

Looking at these balconies from my own always fascinate me. I imagine the lives going on behind them. They come close to giving you a snapshot of these lives. Sometimes you see people coming out and then going in. Mothers chasing after kids. Swings set where no one sits anymore in to enjoy the view. Balconies full of plants and others with a lot of dead and dried ones. I try to imagine how they come tantalizingly close to telling the stories about the lives that goes on inside the houses. They give you a window into the lives of its occupants but they also keep their secrets. They never reveal more than its required.