According to Dr Edward T Hall, spaces between people can be categorized in four basic zones according to the distance maintained between them. They are intimate distance, personal distance, social distance and public distance. Intimate distance is when people are really close to each other (mostly with children and deeply loved ones) and then the distance increases from personal to social to public.
The word ‘space’ has a very different meaning when it comes to travelling locally in India. I am sure that it’s the same in most of the developing countries where population is still an icebreaker after you have spoken about the weather. In local trains, buses, many a times even in rikshaws and taxis, we have a tendency to get confused while calculating the seat/people ratio and almost always end up exceeding the limits. I guess we Indians only believe in intimate distance zone – or rather forced to believe in that.
Another interesting fact is that we never complain about space because we never realize the lack of it. Actually we are so habituated to seeing four people sitting in a seat meant for two that it never surprise us. We sometimes get conscious in front of outsiders and deliver pre-rehearsed cocky lines like – ‘seriously dude I can’t believe how these people travel everyday like this’ or may be ‘welcome to India my friend.’ But in reality the problem of scarcity of room while travelling doesn’t really bother us. We are immune to it.
Recently a friend of mine came from Sweden. Before he could move on to his pre-planned fancy destinations like Rajasthan and Ladakh, I convinced him to keep at least a couple of days for the city I live in – Mumbai. As a tour guide, I made pretty sure that he travelled in Mumbai in all kinds of local transport and not in air-conditioned cabs. He did survive and to my surprise thanked me especially for the local travelling experiences.
He declared that he had never seen such amount of tolerance, patience and the ability to adjust among each other anywhere else in the world. His comment made me remember the VIP underwear advertisement where people constantly request each other to adjust for seats in over crowded places.I tried to remind him of the kicks and elbows he had to endure while travelling from Andheri to Marine Lines in the local train. And also the suffocating bus journey from Kandivali to Bandra where he almost got knocked off while climbing down. He smiled and remarked that it would have been much worse in any other country with this much population in such congestion. At that point of time I didn’t realize what he actually meant but later somehow it made sense. May be it is true. May be India is the only place in the world where such diverse communities end up living together in such over flowing numbers with minimum amount of resistance.
My perspective changed. Though I never have given much thought about such space problems but now I don’t see this as a problem at all. I started noticing the blind beggar making his way effortlessly through the crowded bogies, the lady cutting vegetables for dinner inside a jam packed train totally unaware of the suffocating heat, the old man who felt relief when offered a seat in the front left corner of the over loaded bus, the singing crippled couple maneuvering through the never ending traffic at the red signals, begging for money. This city with a huge population actually represents the spirit of India. It exudes a strange feeling of a pre-choreographed film where all the characters know their role, their journey and their destiny as well. Where all the people are beaded through an invisible thread, and even if there are certain frictions, the unseen thread never breaks.
We really don’t need any extra room to travel– we are happy – we are together – we are content – we are Indians.
Souranath Banerjee is a commerce graduate from Kolkata. He came to Mumbai and worked with Prana Studios (Animation Company) for four years and then had a crazy idea to learn direction. So he did a film direction course at Whistling Woods International. Has made two short films. Currently working on the script of his own Bengali feature film. Also loves to travel and write and click pictures as well.