A Walk in the Terrace

#168

Evening walks have become exceedingly popular this past one and a half years, thanks to the pandemic. Digital detox, away from phones, TVs, laptops, and the endless number of screens onto the terrace, where you get a minuscule chance to be one with nature.

On my own terrace, I say hello to all of my neighbours’ pots and plants. Looking across from one end of my terrace, I see a bunch of girls dawdling and almost eating their microphones while talking inaudibly. The other end has a few old ladies, perhaps in their sixties, rocking air pods and headphones while briskly walking in their sneakers and saris - an interesting combination but no longer a rarity. 

I don’t see many people on some of the other buildings' terraces but I do notice clothes hung and I turn it into a guessing game - look at the clothes and deduce who they might belong to. One batch is easy to guess - a woman's clothes and not too many of them - probably a girl living on her own in this city. Another set of clothes hung on the building facing the opposite street had an array of mixed clothes belonging to a couple whom I’d seen visiting the terrace not very often, that too at the beginning of last year. Recently, there are cute onesies and other tiny clothes being hung along with the regular batch - no points for guesses here!

Let’s talk birds. Two huge Banyan trees standing tall, facing each other, with the terrace I’m standing on in between them. One of them inhabits a murder of crows (learning the names of collection of animals finally pays off), who get quite chatty around 6PM and fly around for a bit after their round table conference while the other tree has mynahs and a few other smaller birds I don’t yet recognize, and a swarm of dragonflies hovering near the two trees. By 7PM, as darkness falls, one can see a cloud of bats flying east to west, origins unknown, landing on one of these two trees for a while before flying back and forth trying to find a comfortable spot to hang upside down.

By this time, I’m back home, having climbed downstairs in a bit of a hurry, as I’m kinda spooked by bats sometimes, especially when it’s dark. Besides, I would’ve reached my target few thousand steps for the day and all set for dinner and night meetings. Evening walks are like reading a book for me - they transport me into an alternative world for a short while, making me appreciate what’s happening there, and forget about the worries and other ongoing things back in the real world, a much needed refreshing hiatus.