This is a story of two friends. It draws upon conversations on WhatsApp during the early days of the lockdown. There is a gap of 22 years between them. There is much that they share. Many similarities bind them. But it is the obvious age gap, and the difference in appearance that draws attention attracts strange comments, and leads to some unease. COVID-19 drew them closer, happy to engage in their to and fro messages with no peering eyes of disapproval or the plain curiosity of friendships between two people of two generations!
Mayhem: (Over WhatsApp) Hi, how are you doing? How are you today, I mean?
FCB: It has been three days since I got out of the house, the rain, the trains and the water clogging in this city calls out to me.
Mayhem: You did not go out for that usual stroll of yours?
FCB: Naah. Didn’t feel like it but you know what, honestly, the daily travel that I am missing now…killed a lot of people in Bombay…literally and metaphorically.
Mayhem: Yes, we both were part of this drill, we enjoyed every bit of it, hain na? Why were we so awkward then?
FCB: Ok so I totally miss it, I guess because people around us were making us awkward?
Mayhem: That awkward feeling that arises when we encounter something that does not quite fit in. Something that is not familiar with. Do you think people were passing judgment about how we look together?
FCB: I felt that a lot of times, people did! But I honestly do not care about that bit.
Mayhem: What kind of judgment do you think they were making?
FCB: I think people have this stereotypical idea of “friendship” and they cannot quite make sense of two people divided by a huge age gap standing and having a chat like teenagers at a railway station or maybe travelling together. Honestly, I think that makes them uncomfortable, guess that is because they might not have seen something like this. It is unfamiliar.
Mayhem: Yes. Social awkwardness is real. It peaks in situations where social rules are unclear. Somebody breaks a social norm. People want desperately to fit in with those around them, and awkwardness exists in situations where acceptance seems to be in the balance or somebody else is being rejected.
When you say that, I feel it is the context of our lives that make us see what we have been socialized to see. So, they only ‘stick to the norm’…the norm of what a friendship not just is, but SHOULD BE or LOOK LIKE.
FCB: So honestly there is something that keeps troubling me… I do not understand why people start living their lives to suit other’s judgment. Often people change the way they look at things because of the disapproval they face, and I feel that is not right.
Mayhem: Hmmm…You know what you say makes much sense, I am only reminded of Durkheim’s seminal understanding of social facts. Not only are these types of behaviour and thinking, external to the individual, but they are endued with a compelling and coercive power by which, whether they wished it or not, they impose themselves upon them. Let me quote Durkheim (really tempted to) on how conventions become habits. “From his earliest years, we oblige him to eat, drink and sleep at regular hours, and to observe cleanliness, calm and obedience; to respect customs and conventions… If this constraint in time ceases to be felt it is because it gradually gives rise to habits, to inner tendencies”.[i]
FCB: Aah! Now this kind of makes sense… I used to keep wondering why people find it so difficult to “FIT IN” and why they try so hard to meet the standards that are raised for them.
Mayhem: I feel that a lot of students/individuals trained in Sociology or Anthropology are often branded as weird people because they ask questions, and challenge norms and practice. However, isn’t it increasingly the need of the hour? Indeed that is what social sciences and sociology are really about? To use Peter Berger’s term…” debunk”.[ii] To peer behind the façade.[iii]
FCB: It is funny how like my seniors keep telling me how they are always termed as WEIRD because they asked too many questions. Whenever I questioned my parents and argued with them, they felt strangely disturbed. And when I told them that I have the right to ask questions, they told me that you feel you have become too smart…
Mayhem: You know what is the other WEIRD thing with us? When I met you after a lot of juggad (efforts in Bambaiyya) on my birthday, I had a sudden sense of absolute discomfort.
FCB: Discomfort? Wait, what? Why?
Mayhem: That day I did not sit next to you, I chose to stand all through those 20 odd minutes… For the last several years, I have taught and critically engaged with the idea of social norms. I perhaps had not quite realized its power. The discomfort came with a sudden sense of wondering whether friendships require any assurance like ‘meeting in person’.
FCB: Hmm …. Now that you make me think about it this way, I understand better that sense of awkwardness, that anxiety about living up to norms of all kinds, failing at it, facing the consequences for it. I feel the full import of our friendship is not just accepted, but disapproved of. I used to think earlier that sanctions and ostracism only happened in the past. It is perhaps the solipsism of my privilege[iv] that blinded me to what structural exclusion meant. I realized the differentiated and loaded nature of individual choices and wants.
Mayhem: Don’t we make attempts to ‘fit in’ too? As much as we critique it?! Guess we do. You might ask how it is possible. We look different together FCB! Our height, our age (I know you don’t like me bringing this up) and… actually that is it! But when people look at us strangely, we make sure that we never go for a quick cup of chai together to any areas around our college. We take care not to be seen in spaces together that might be out of the box for people…like a teacher and student going out for chai together…bewajaah aur bindaas? Are we not fitting in?
FCB: But then do u mean being exceptional is wrong? Like we aren’t the stereotypical type of friends according to like people. We do ensure that people don’t see us hanging out in and around college because I guess somewhere even we are conscious about it and what comments people will pass. And the age factor does not really matter. What matters is the bond, the understanding and the care.
Mayhem: Honestly, COVID made me unlearn and relearn many elements of my sociological training. It made us realize the depth and intensity of social norms, coercive rules, and the idea to fit in. Our friendships, even between ‘straight’ people, were unacceptable. There was coercion to fit in for ideas about friendship. That old lesson of Sociology and my university days in JNU to ask questions acquired a new meaning. That training taught us to challenge stereotypes about gender, community, friendship, and care.
[i] Durkheim, Emile. 1982. (1895) The Rules of sociological Method. (ed.) Steven Lukes with an Introduction. Translated by W.D. Halls. New York: The Free Press.
[ii] Berger, Peter. (1963). Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Doubleday.
[iii] https://doingsociology2020.blogspot.com/2020/05/crisis-and-sociological-imagination.html, accessed on 18th September 2020.
[iv] This refers to the way that privilege often restricts vision. Those who belong to the so called dominant group often do not see or are ‘blind’ to ‘discriminations’ based on caste, race, gender, sexuality.
***
Pranoti Chirmuley is an Assistant Professor at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. She has a doctorate in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Florian Pereira is currently a student in the Bachelor of Arts programme in St Xavier’s College, Mumbai.