Looking out of a high-rise window, marvelling at installation-trapeze artists

Opening the home windows of my flat in Kolkata after being away for a while, I noticed that the neighbouring constructing had been draped in strips of inexperienced netting, beneath which was the uneven grid of a bamboo scaffolding. On bits of the constructing’s exterior I may see the soiled beige punctuated by rhythmic splodges of recent white paint, tough squares, whimsical triangles, thick stripes that ended all of a sudden, as if an abstract-expressionist artist had labored on a six-storey canvas.

This was clearly an extended overdue paint job. The patches had been truly primer or plaster utilized to restore the dents. I puzzled the place the employees had been. Until I remembered it was a Sunday.

Issues had been quiet for the following two days and I forgot concerning the scaffolding. On Wednesday, as I sat right down to work, I heard voices simply exterior my window. This startled me, since my desk home windows are on the fourth ground, with a sheer drop of about 50 ft from window to floor. Trying exterior, I noticed a determine stage with my window, sitting on a horizontal bamboo behind the veil of inexperienced. In his proper hand was a brush that he dipped right into a paint can suspended subsequent to him. In his left hand, he had a cell that he was utilizing to offer somebody directions about depositing an utility in an area authorities workplace.

After some time, the person ended the decision and put away the cellphone. Somebody known as right down to him and he poked out his head from behind the web. A rope snaked down with a fabric bundle tied to it. The person untied the bundle and took out sandpaper with which he rubbed down a spot.

Over the following three weeks, I used to be continually conscious of those employees as they traversed throughout the cliff-face of the constructing, first placing an undercoat after which a two-colour last coat, working their approach down from the sixth ground, nonchalantly balancing on the bamboos, with nothing to cease the autumn ought to one in every of them lose their footing. The netting disappeared after a couple of days and I guessed it had been there to not shade the employees, however to guard the primary coats from rain. No rain fell in April and these males labored via the most popular days of the 12 months, suspended towards a obvious vivid wall with the summer time solar beating down on them.

Inside my flat I carried on with my life, simply as I may see individuals carrying on contained in the constructing being painted. Between us, this day by day, gradual, surreal choreography on the bamboo grid continued as if invisible. Under the balancing painters and suspended masons, the vehicles saved turning into the driveway to the constructing entrance, disgorging their passengers earlier than transferring on.

As soon as, a employee dropped a coil of rope with out trying. The clump fell to the bottom, narrowly lacking the rear windshield of a shiny new sedan because it drove previous. Had it hit, it would not have carried out any harm. However definitely there would have been livid shouting, a sudden puncturing of the obliviousness to the quietly perilous drama being enacted above.

Lastly, as soon as the paint job was full, got here essentially the most hair-raising half: two males calmly started to take down the scaffolding the one approach it could possibly be carried out – whereas standing or sitting on it. Consider a person sitting on a department making use of a noticed to some extent of the department between himself and the tree trunk, however doing this intentionally and mindfully. By means of a sequence of practised manoeuvres, the pair loosened first one finish of a horizontal bamboo after which, dropping right down to the horizontal one under, the opposite finish.

Then one in every of them tied the loosened bamboo with a rope and let it right down to a person ready under earlier than repeating the entire course of. Inside 20 minutes, the final part of the scaffolding was gone, as had been the employees. The constructing shone spotless within the daylight. Nearly spotless. From my window I may see the place one of many painters had left footprints on a spanking white ledge.