This is My Space, This is Your Space

To
Mr. Anurag Mathur
New Delhi/New York, India/USA

Dear Mr. Mathur,

I am a great admirer of your book Inscrutable Americans and have voraciously read the whole of it many times and some of it innumerably. If your book was allowed as a valid academic reference, I would have cited it several times. It has been almost twenty years since its publication and the advent of cable television in India notwithstanding it continues to be the most reliable travel guide for Indian students travelling to the US. It has been some months now that I have scoured through reams and reams of mental notes to add to your narrative of what made the people of this land inscrutable even to the most discerning observer. But everything that I noted seemed to be some sort of a modification on what you had already observed. A revised edition of Inscrutable Americans which seemed as an awesome literary project at first seemed woefully thin of new ideas and observations. But two events lead me to write this blog that has been festering on my mind for a little over a year. One, the arrival of my best friend from India; and second, a procrastinating surf through The Onion.

My friend arrived in the heretofore anonymous big city bogged down with luggage but fortified by the satisfaction of being exactly where she wanted to be. Having put an emotional investment in this friendship for over ten years I wanted to make her transition to a new city as smooth as possible. Amidst the confusion of helping her move to her new apartment, translating the menu from American to English and explaining the demography and racial politics of the city, I searched to leave her with one definitive that could be the lynchpin around which she could build her own body of knowledge about the America around her. I wasn’t able to leave her with one but as it turns out my seemingly random ramblings to her did have certain coherence. My weekly perusal through The Onion led me to it.
I realise in hindsight that what I really wanted her to understand at the outset was the American sense of personal space. Of all that is published in The Onion in a deliberately exaggerated manner, this one did not need any embellishment to make it funny. Since I myself have arrived at an accurate measurement of American Personal Space after numerous trials (and errors) the article about somebody apologising for accidentally encroaching into somebody’s Personal Space is right on target.

Slightest Amount Of Physical Contact Apologized For

NEW YORK—During a crowded rush-hour subway ride Monday, an inadvertent brushing of one human being's hand against the forearm of another...

The Americans value Personal Space over comfort. I never noticed this until one day I was travelling back home during “rush hour”. The bus was almost full by the time I got in and I looked for an empty seat without much hope of finding one. But surprisingly (not since then) I found that there were plenty of seats unoccupied. Back home, finding people standing in the aisle was a confident sign that all the seats were occupied. But here I saw that passengers apparently preferred to stand for the long ride to Wherever even though there were plenty of seats available. I was puzzled but survival instinct honed from years of practice in public transport led me to plant myself on a seat first. Two uncomfortable expressions on either side of me stared back before they went back to studying their literature and fiddling with their I-pod. Having assured my back of a long rest, I returned my attention to the situation that had puzzled me. Why would Americans prefer to stand in a (crowded) bus when there are empty seats available? What could they possibly hold dearer than the sitting comfort of a ride to Wherever?
I figured out that every alternate seat was empty – the early passengers having occupied all the seats that were the most distant from each other. As the bus filled up the latest passengers too took seats the furthest away from each other until the only seats left were the ones between sitting passengers. And that’s when Americans decide to stand. The width of a bus seat is the maximum that they will allow in terms of encroachment of their Personal Space. For an ignorant like me to go sit next to them was perhaps pardonable but for a fellow American to do so would be unthinkable. Hailing from a country that tries to pack in as many people and vehicles as possible in one square feet, all that space that Americans allow each other seems quite a waste. I learned later that it is illegal for a car to stop less than a bumper-length away from the car in front of it when the traffic signal is red because I think it the perfect measure of the average amount of personal space (front and back) that the Americans think ideal. In countries that do not hold Space as sacred as the Americans do, traffic is mostly bumper to bumper. If coincidentally the driver can see a bit of road between him and the car in front, he would accelerate to close the gap. That’s the reason you find traffic moving even when the traffic signal is red. In the US though, Space.. Personal Space is sacred. It is not inviolable because people like me encroach it all the time but it is the single-most valued cultural hallmark of the American persona today.

That is what I wanted my friend to learn first and foremost. To understand it, to know it and if she deems fit – to accept it.

And this Mr. Mathur is my first entry into the revised edition of Inscrutable Americans. Of course, it needs a humorous spin to it that only your pen can provide.

Best Regards,
X
(In case the Personal Space police catches me)