Keeping in Touch
How are you doing?
Recently, I met a batchmate after what seemed like an eternity, but was essentially the last year and a half, or what is better known as the ‘pandemic era’. We were never close, but we started our course at the same time, sat next to each other in the office before I moved out, and navigated the rigors of the initial months of research together. I went in for a handshake as I am known to do, but he reached out for a hug. It felt nice, and the next time I met a batchmate, I instinctively went in for a hug too. Against my tendencies, this newish behavior felt odd, but also oddly comforting.
I have never been a big hugger. In fact, I remember a time, when all of a sudden, everyone around me was substituting the welcome handshake for a hug, and I had felt like I hadn’t quite gotten the memo. We, in my family, aren’t very big on hugging or showing affection via touch. I don’t remember many instances of receiving a hug from my father, so much so that the times I did, are memorable. So, when the pandemic hit and one of the casualties of social distancing was physical contact, I didn’t think I’d miss it.
But, I do. I miss celebrating a minor accomplishment with a major hug. I wonder if publishing my paper would have been sweeter and not the ‘business as usual’ event it actually became if I had one of this life-affirming, ‘great work!’ hugs. A piece of news I received recently threw me off a bit. I wish I had the grammar then, to ask a friend for a hug. I often find myself aching to play team sport again. In what seems like a previous life altogether, it had given me so much joy. The constant fist-pumping, back-slapping, and hard hi-fiving, a source of much encouragement on the field and maybe even some gumption off it.
I wonder if my yearning for companionship is, in no small part, a longing caused by subtraction, by the loss of access to physical, non-sexual, even un-romantic touch, an invisible source of comfort, reassurance, and safety. This, I’ve understood to be one of those things that I didn’t completely acknowledge when I had it, but whose absence I have felt in my bones at times. From a piece in the Guardian,
As adults, we may not comprehend the importance of touch even when it disappears. “We might begin to realise that something is missing, but we won’t always know that it’s touch,” says Prof Francis McGlone, a neuroscientist based at Liverpool John Moores University and a leader in the field of affective touch…Touch has a huge impact on our psychological and physical wellbeing, says Prof Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford. “With our close friends and family, we touch each other more than we realise,” he says.
The need for touch in stressful situations is a squarely biological one. In the piece, Dr. Katerina Fotopolous, a professor of psychodynamic neuroscience says,
“Touch is a modulator that can temper the effects of stress and pain, physical and emotional. We have seen in our research that a lack of touch is associated with greater anxiety,” says Fotopoulou. “In times of high stress – the loss of a job, or a bereavement, for example – having more touch from others helps us cope better, particularly in calming the effects of [the stress hormone] cortisol… Lots of studies support the theory that touch gives the brain a signal that it can delegate its resources for coping because someone else is there to bear the brunt. This relaxes the body, going some way to restoring the stress budget if you like.”
That I associate touch with comfort is not without precedent. In a survey of ~ 40000 people from 112 countries, the words most commonly associated with touch were - “comforting”, “warm” and “love.” Touch usually induces a strong emotive response, sometimes stronger than words even. Non-consensual touch, for example, can have a lasting negative response. However, in a safe space like the aegis of a relationship or on the sports field, touch can bolster connections and better performance.
Our ideas of touch and when it is deemed appropriate are firmly steeped in a widespread cultural aversion to it. In an op-ed, Anna Broadway points towards a short-handed understanding of touch as an adult concept and asks,
Why should so many relationships yield deep intellectual and emotional bonds that we so rarely express in touch? Depending on when you think life begins, we spend nearly the first 10 months of life tethered to another human being — and every heartbeat depends on that tie. Even after birth, infants do best when they maintain near-constant touch with other humans. If early life depends on such connections, why do we find them so dispensable later?
We seek out friends for help, ask them to share thoughts on matters of life, be vulnerable in front of them, and lay plain our insecurities and oddities. Why are we so hesitant to the idea of expressing these complexities via the basic human function of touch?
Saying ‘keep in touch’ is also no longer literal. In all fairness, it never was, but it’s even lesser so during the pandemic. In a recent conversation, a close friend explained why he isn’t responsive on text and why he’d rather have a long phone call instead. It made me ruminate on the multitude of ways we keep in touch with friends. Each method is calibrated to suit the specificities of a relationship, yes, but also keeps in mind the practical difficulties posed by distances, schedules, and the fact that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West.
I’ve warmed up to the idea of sending voice notes and find it exciting to listen to them. It helps me place a person in a place and context, more vividly than a message or phone call does. I feel like someone has taken out some time, pondered or what to tell me, even if for a little bit, and given me an opinion that is unfettered but not reactionary. It lacks the tactile nature of human contact, but it is somehow more intimate than a text message or a phone call.
Ultimately keeping in touch is about sharing tidbits of your life with people. If only as a peek, but getting to know the happenings in someone else’s universe, helps calm ours. We can imagine them going about their day, sending emails, doing their jobs. We can imagine reaching out and touching them. And sometimes that is enough.
Reads (long or not)
Anuk Arudpragasam’s second novel, A Passage North, got nominated for the Booker Prize and I just finished it. I was awestruck by the sheer beauty of Anuk’s prose and was very moved by his stream of consciousness writing.
This finely written and reported piece on the promise and business of Canadian higher education was heartbreaking to read: The Shadowy Business of International Education.
Sally Rooney’s new novel (Beautiful World, Where Are You) is out and out are the think-pieces on where Rooney belongs in the pantheon of literary greats. This piece did something different. It highlights what most reviews of Rooney’s work miss - the Irishness of her settings and characters - Sally Rooney Is Irish.
My friend Sanjana Ramachandran wrote a keenly researched piece on casteism in Indian Advertising. Its a must-read - Zomato, Kent, Rolling Stone- Casteism in Indian ads, marketing and how not to say sorry
To Watch
Sex Education S03 on Netflix is as life-affirming, heartwarming, and whimsical as the previous two seasons. It furthers the stories of so many characters in such a fully realised manner. The music is on point, it is lovingly shot and impeccably staged. Not like this is an under-the-radar kind of thing, but do watch!
Dale Steyn, the South African fast bowler, retired from cricket recently. Dale charging in and delivering out-swingers at high pace was one of the prettiest sights on the cricket field. I loved this chat he had with James Anderson, another fast-bowling great.
The Discreet Charm of the Savarna’s is a brilliant and biting satirical short film directed by Rajesh Rajamani. I loved Rajesh’s episode on Anurag Minus Verma’s podcast too.
To Listen
Tajdar Junaid’s album - ‘What colour is your raindrop’ is sublime. Listen to the entire album in a go! Daastan and Mockingbird are my favourites.
My friend Namita sent me One Last Dream by Radical Face. I loved it and have been exploring their discography ever since. Chip Taylor’s On the Radio has been playing on loop ever since I recapped Sex Education.
There are so many wonderful nuggets of trivia in Mint critic Uday Bhatia’s deep-dive into Bollywood gangster films and Satya on Amit Varma’s podcast, Seen and The Unseen. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Here’s “Hope” is the thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson
Hope
by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
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