Peeking at the city tales told by Dhaka balconies

Step out onto any rooftop in Dhaka and take a slow spin. You'll notice that almost every building in this urban jungle has one thing in common: balconies or verandas, whatever you want to call them.

From Banani's sleek glass railings to Old Dhaka's rust-stained iron grills, each balcony here is a stage, a diary, a confessional — and Dhaka's residents perform, scribble, and gossip on them like nobody's watching. Except, well, we are.

Because we Dhakaites are nosy or, in better words, curious with a capital C. Even as I write this, I catch myself peeking outside, not for fresh air (let's be real, this is Dhaka) but for stories. And balconies? They're the perfect theatres for the absurd, the mundane, and the gloriously ridiculous.

You never really know what you'll find on a Dhaka balcony. One could be doubling as a yoga studio, complete with gym instruments abandoned in the corner, now repurposed as climbing frames for the house cat. Another could be the scene of an all-out laundry war, where bed sheets and curtains wrestle over sunlight like gladiators who forgot their swords but somehow remembered the drama.

Some balconies are simply outdoor storage units masquerading as living space. You'll see precarious towers of broken furniture that defy both logic and the laws of physics, or piles of boxes that, judging by the smell, should probably be declared hazardous waste.

Then there are the adventurous households taking "urban farming" too literally, raising chickens in cages, as though testing how far "farm-to-table" can be stretched in Dhaka apartments. Balconies, in short, are where the city's quirks hang out to dry.

And yet, not all balconies scream chaos. Some soothe. Bougainvillea vines curl around grills, little ferns compete politely for sunlight, papaya trees rise from clay pots with optimism. Fairy lights, wind chimes, and dreamcatchers signal the presence of girls quietly rebelling in aesthetic ways.

But perhaps the most poignant balconies belong to our elderly. For them, these small slabs of concrete are not extras — they're boundaries. The farthest they can go.

Take Sahura Khatun, a 60-something, diabetic. Her doctor insists she walk forty minutes daily. Walk where, exactly? Dhaka's sidewalks are either occupied by vendors, dug up by construction, or a minefield of open drains. So, she walks on her treadmill, on her sixth-floor balcony, sipping tea between steps and watching traffic as though it were a storm — fascinating to observe, but too dangerous to step into.

Then there's Mohammad Ali, 85. Once a man of the land in Mymensingh, he now rules a kingdom of pigeons from his Jigatola balcony. He reads the newspaper there and surveys the road. "It feels like the traffic can hit me at any time," he says. And so, like many others, his balcony becomes his promenade, his park bench, his lifeline. It's his personal theatre, except everyone is part of the audience, whether they want to be or not.

Balconies, in other words, are where Dhaka resists. This city has long been accused of choosing cars over people. Pavements vanish, green spaces shrink, pollution thickens. And yet, tilt your gaze upward and you'll see something stubbornly human. People carving out space, however small, for plants. For birds. For gossip. For tea with grandchildren.

It is where Dhaka pushes back against being dismissed as one giant traffic jam. Its where human stories leak through the concrete, reminding us that we were never designed to be boxed into these cells.