A room with a view

In Telugu, there is this saying -- illu
kati chudu, pelli chesi chudu. Literally meaning -- build a
house and see, conduct a marriage and see. I wouldn't know of
marriages (though I am arguably a Shaadi.com veteran) but now I
can say I know a bit about building an "illu", even it happens to
be on the terrace of another and nothing very grand.

Oh yes, it has gone over budget. As any wise man would have
expected it to. And it has taken a lot many days than was
estimated. As any wise man would have expected it to. But then,
what matters is that it is finally done and now I have a good
idea of what it takes to "build" something. Even if that "something"
is but a sheet-roofed writer's shack designed and built (for lack
of a more "builderly" term) to be a penthouse.

How exactly should a newly built place feel? Overwhelmingly
impersonal? Silently spacious? Finished and foreign? Fragile
enough to inspire handling with care?

Whatever it be, I wouldn't know much about "new" spaces -- being
very low maintenance and afflicted with a sense of aesthetics
that borders the spartanly minimal -- I have not much of an
affinity for the grand and glitzy (in terms of spaces) and I
haven't been in that many of them -- at least long enough to be
considered a resident.

And then again, though the walls are new, the tiles are new
and a lot of time, money and work (at least by my standards) has
gone into creating this space, I am certainly no stranger to
it, this being the terrace of my "illu" after all. So maybe
this feeling of guarded strangeness is nothing more than what
I feel when staring at an empty page in a much used diary...the
diary is familiar but the page is still new and empty.

And yes, now for some background on this writer's shack :-)

If you know me, you would know that I absolutely adore open
spaces and just love being close to nature. So then, its not
tough to guess that a shack for someone like me would be either
on a cliff-top or besides the sea or out in the middle of trees and
other wilds. But then, I haven't got any closer to owning any such
space for the shack to come up there.

So...

If you know me, you would also know that I am rain mad and just
cannot have enough of getting drenched or being close to the rain.
And then, for me there is another far more crazier (and probably
primeval) level of associating with water, inasmuch that it is in
many ways my very ink. And, since we had a very very wet season
last year, I spent a lot of time getting drenched in deluges of
water; be it on my expeditions into the city, to or fro from work
or on mycycling trips. In fact, the first time I had the terrace
seen by an architect was on August 15th of last year, a day I got
totally drenched six times (inclusive of once on the terrace).So,
once I decided on getting a "room with a writerly view" here itself
on the illu, it had to get ready in time for me to get high on waters
that fall from the skies*.

So...

If you know me, you will also know that I am unschooled and
decide on things in my own patented illogical way. And another
strong motivator for getting the shack done ASAP was one of
the little man's sketches. Of a structure that has one door,
a conical roof and another door up there on the roof. And oh yeah,
it got done in a jiffy too!

Now, for the view. I would of course have wanted some more
elevation, maybe some 3-4 floors into the skies to see more
of the sunrise and the sunset. But yes, there are guaranteed
views of both (does that sound like advertising copy?). When a
bit more footloose, I can walk a few steps on either side and
get an eyefull of bursting blooms. A (tree of a) rosebush that
doesn't respect or care for the boundary that separates my
place from a nice neighbour's (ok, it is their rose bush, but
they have never made us feel so) and a yellow flowering tree
which I think is the Golden Trumpet on the front
of my place which runs riot with more sunbirds than I can
count, describe or capture :-)And yes, the junction box, too.

And then, there is the view on one side. Of trillions and
trillions** of lantana flowers and 8GB cards full of butterflies.
How long the butterflies stay around and how long the plot
stays that way, wild and overgrown with lantana (and other wild
flowers) is anyone's guess -- especially since there are rumors
of a water pipeline being laid to my so far "developing" and
suburbian colony.

But as long as it lasts, I would love to drink of it.

Maybe I will put little bird houses all over the terrace
(with blinds in place too) and shoot bird portraits. Or
maybe I will do some cooking. Or I will do what I have been
doing all this while, a bit of this and a bit of that :-)

But anyway, it's a bit of a kick to have a room with a
view. And yes, the little man agrees too.

* -- Call me an optimist (as opposed to being pessoan or
angsty) but I am still hoping there will be a bit more of
rains this year. And a cloudburst does seem and sound out
of the world up there.

** -- Lantana flowers in an inflorescence arrangement. Also, I am
not being literal.