Some years ago, while exploring Bhuj, a small city in Gujarat, India’s westernmost state, I stumbled upon a beautiful and initially enigmatic structure: a column that supported an enclosure adorned with hundreds of holes. It seemed to me to be a geometric abstraction of a giant tree — until a pigeon peeped out from one of the openings.

Soon there were hundreds of birds flying in and out of the grand birdhouse. Locals informed me that the structure was called a “chabutra.”