Most cheerful are the strangers I have met at bars, music concerts and cricket stadiums. All of us there are committed to having fun and we get to have more fun if we cooperate with each other.
The strangers in restaurants and cinema halls are not the same. There is no solidarity there because everyone is looking to enjoy the experience in their own way.
I was with my colleague, M, at a coffee shop that was housed in the basement of a building. I recall that we were having an intense conversation about something. And M was starting to get annoyed with the loud bunch at the adjoining table. At one point, she half-instructed and half-requested the waiter to ask them to lower their voices.
‘You could have asked us directly’, said someone from that table. They seemed to be annoyed with us now.
The whole point of communicating through the waiter was to avoid the awkwardness of talking to each other. And now we had to do so, that too in raised voices, and make it awkward for everyone else in that coffee shop.
The strangers we share our neighbourhoods with are committed to doing almost nothing together. We hardly even acknowledge each other as we go about our daily lives.
I was driving with my friend in his car through a narrow lanes in his neighbourhood. We got stuck behind a car that was parked waywardly and weren’t sure we could pass through. So my friend honked until a man came out visibly irritated. He stood there and directed us, ‘a little to the left, a little straight’, and got us through. My friend rolled down the window to have a word with him.
‘If you park your car a little more to the side’, he said, ‘cars can pass through easily and no one has to disturb you.’
Pat came the reply: ‘This is India, and we can only do this much.’
As we say in Bangalore, ‘Swalpa adjust maadi’. Excuse minor inconveniences and carry on.
The strangers we travel with on public transport are the trickiest of all. Many times, we are compelled to spend long hours putting up with each other.
While traveling on a Volvo bus, a co-passenger on the seat in front of me reclined his seat so far behind that his head was inches away from my midriff. My aunt was sitting next to me and this felt like such an intrusion of our space. So, I requested him to pull his seat a little to the front. He bluntly refused to do that. Instead, he suggested that we also recline our seats back.
Even though we have a common destination, we want to get there in our own comfortable way.
The wedding invitation came unexpectedly and I eagerly booked my tickets. It was my friends’ wedding, and I hadn’t travelled to the hills in a long while. I paid a premium price to get a window seat on the flight so that I could enjoy the view of the Himalayas enroute to Bagdogra. It was early winter and the weather forecast was just so fine.
On that morning, I had a hearty breakfast at the airport and kept my book in hand as I boarded the flight.
I had to double-check if I was indeed at row number 10. Yes I was.
My boarding pass says 10 A but there was someone already sitting there, and the woman on the middle seat turned towards me.
‘My seat number is 10 A’, I said pointing to the window.
She nodded, ‘yes, yes’. Without saying a full sentence, she suggested I take the aisle seat instead.
I kept my bag in the cabin space and sat down on the aisle seat.
She seemed to be the mother of a teenage boy who couldn’t stop looking outside the window and taking pictures with his mobile phone.
During that year (2023), I had renewed my commitment to the practice of journaling. I had also attended writing workshops and written many personal essays. During my writings, I realized how debilitating it is to not be able to speak out. So much discomfort to myself and others could have been avoided if I could speak my mind more often.
After taking a few minutes, I shared with her that this was my first trip to the North-East and that I had paid a premium price for the ticket so that I could sit on the window seat.
She started talking to her son in their language (Nepali) and then turned towards me and spoke in her halting, gentle manner, ‘Brother, you can take the seat.’
‘It’s alright, I have taken a window seat for my return journey as well. I will enjoy the views then’.
‘Is it? When are you returning?’
‘On Sunday’
‘You can take the seat brother’
‘Thank you, but it’s alright’
I had to tell myself not to feel awkward about this exchange. Before I felt better about myself for speaking out.
‘Do you work in Bangalore?’, I asked.
‘No, we were there for last two months because his heart surgery’, she said nodding towards her son.
‘Oh, how is he now?
‘He is fine now, brother’
On landing in Bagdogra, we exchanged warm wishes and carried on with our lives.
Susan Cain’s book ‘Quiet’ helped me understand the nuance between being an introvert and being shy. If interested, you could watch this video and she now has a podcast that can be helpful for parents raising introverted children.
While being introverted seems to be genetic, shyness stems from a fear of social judgement – something we start learning through our early childhood experiences.
The main objective of our brain is survival. And neural pathways have been formed throughout our lives to ensure our safety. Our brain knows about what stresses and harms our bodies, and what keeps us relaxed and safe.
If social interactions are stressful for us, our brain will keep sending us messages to avoid them.
While our brain is keeping us out of the immediate danger of likely social embarrassment, we have to deal with the long term impact of having lost chances at living a fulfilling life - simply because we did not speak out at the opportune moment.
The good news is that we can unlearn shyness by pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones. And over time, reroute the neural pathways. There is much about foregoing old habits and forming new ones in ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear.
I realize that interacting with strangers could be one way for introverts to form new habit of speaking out more easily.
As compared to friends and family, strangers don’t know us and there is no self-image we need to protect. For example, I think it would become odd for all of us if I suddenly became chatty with my family members who have always known me to be the ‘silent’ kind. So even when I feel like being more chatty, I stop myself to protect this self-image.
But with strangers, we can be however we wish to, and see what happens.
It takes time and effort for me to speak my mind and when I don’t get a favourable response, I end up feeling that it was not worth all that effort. Over the years, I stopped trusting people around me and preferred to keep my thoughts to myself.
By speaking out with strangers, we can learn to place our trust in another person.
Much like this blog, which most of my family and friends are not even aware of.
But here I am, sharing my inner life with readers I have never met.
Here we are, sharing our inner life with readers we've never met :) And, here we are, building our own community, word by word, essay by essay :))
Lovely piece! The encounter you describe could well be a beautiful short story. Titled Window Seat, perhaps. :)