It all started because Karthik wanted to buy a laptop.
He asked me to meet him at a Reliance store in Vijayanagar. It was around 4:45 in the evening.
As usual, Karthik said he had left his house early but still arrived late.
We went inside, looked at the laptops, and did not find the model we wanted. So we walked back towards the parking.
The store is connected to a parking building with around six levels. Karthik had parked on the sixth floor. If I remember correctly, I had parked on the fifth.
When we came out, it was raining heavily.
I was just recovering from a fever. Karthik did not have a jacket or pullover. We are no longer irresponsible backbenchers from school.
We waited.
Usually, me and Karthik would spend this kind of time discussing Flawsomes. We could easily talk for hours and realise later that the rain had stopped somewhere in the middle.
But Karthik got on a call.
That was when I noticed the pigeons.
A group of them were hiding underneath the AC vents of the building next to us.
This answered one of my long-term questions: where do pigeons go when it rains?
I have also wondered where crows and other birds go, but there were many more pigeons in front of me, so the pigeons were my priority.
One particularly determined pigeon was still trying to fly between floors while it was pouring. The others were hiding under different AC vents, moving between the first, second, and third floors.
Even the pigeons were changing parking levels.
I took out my phone and started recording them.
Then I looked back at the parking structure.
We were stuck there. Karthik was still talking to somebody. I had six levels available to me and no immediate reason to leave.
The phrase “liminal space” came into my head.
I thought: can I shoot a small film here before the rain stops?
Maybe.
The usual answer would probably be no.
I started anyway.
To exit the building, a vehicle has to travel from one side of a floor to the other, go down, and then travel back in the opposite direction on the next floor.
The whole structure forces you to move in circles.
Once I started recording, I noticed that the circles were not identical.
The EXIT signs were different on every floor. If I was building a parking structure, I would probably put the same sign in roughly the same position on every level.
Clearly, the person who designed this had, let's say, a rebellious soul and hated symmetry. (Clearly not a fan of Wes Anderson.)
Sometimes the sign was high. Sometimes it was leaning on the ground. On the fourth floor, I remember it being placed against a grill.
The lights were also different.
Some areas were bright. Other areas had so little light that we could have shot a horror film there.
On one side of the structure, I could see the pigeons, another parking area, and part of the city.
On the other side was a narrow street covered in trees.
One of the trees had bright yellow flowers. I still do not know what kind of tree it was. Against all the concrete, the yellow looked unusually bright.
It was also raining much harder on the pigeons' side than on the tree's side.
That felt slightly unfair to the pigeons.
Once Karthik finished his call, I made him hold the phone camera. Then I started driving around the parking structure.
We went from the top to the bottom and back again around fifteen or twenty times.
There were a few guys sitting and talking on the first floor. By the final round, they had definitely noticed us.
I told Karthik that everyone probably thought we were idiots.
He said, “Of course. If I roam around with you, people will think I am an idiot.”
I told him I had assumed he was the idiot and I was the one roaming around with him.
In the end, we did not buy a laptop.
I did not finish the film either. I captured a few shots, found some strange EXIT signs, and finally learned where pigeons go when it rains.
We waited there for around an hour and a half.
I still got drenched while riding home.
All in all, I would call it a successful observation.
Another day, another rain, and now I know where pigeons go.
STILL OBSERVING, SAM.