Importance of density in daily life

Today I saw the social distancing circles America is reopening daring the virus to do its worst Someone had marked widely spaced circles about eight feet in diameter all over a park It was a picture of a Sunday from the future mdash a park full of families picnicking happily within their tight social spacesIts a new world Every alternate seat in waiting rooms is empty extra kerning has been applied to human beings in queues romantic dinners for two are eaten at virusfree distance with masked and gloved waiters Buses drive at half full trains with alternate berths unoccupied restaurant tables have plastic partitions between themIn no time at all we have slipped into a world of Lakshman rekhas Distance yourself from your neighbour make room for an invisible person left and right of you Stand apart or dieDensity is on my mind today The human excuse for crowding whether in buses highways trains or planes has always been that there are too many humans 78 billion and not enough space Countries like India and China with populous cities like Mumbai and Beijing get the worst of the crowding and its consequences mdash traffic jams road rage crowded slums migrant workers living nine and ten to a room extreme pollution mdash and wildfire epidemicsSo the virus has taught us mdash crowds are bad for your health I will fill the air between you the virus says and even god wont save you if youre less than six feet apartProxemics is the concept of personal space a phrase introduced in 1966 by anthropologist Edward T Hall Personal space is like a bubble around you that your body regards as its territory The space varies from culture to culture and species to species mdash an Indian or a Japanese would probably have a smaller personal space than a nomad on the Mongolian steppes A tiger needs 60 to 100 sq kmsIntimate distance for humans ranges from touching distance to about 45 cms and is occupied by near and dear ones such as lovers children and pets Personal distance begins at arms length or around 45 cms from the person and ends at about 120 cms This is the space for friends and colleagues Social distance ranges from 120 to 245 cms and is reserved for strangers and new acquaintances Six feetWe now stand at stranger distance from each otherHow are our chickens doing social distancewise And cows Pigs Sheep All the animals we eat Its not a stupid question If germs spread between humans when theyre too close what happens when the animals we butcher and eat are squeezed together as they are in the factories where they are farmed Do viruses jump between them too They do This is how pandemics startThe news is bad Thanks to your love of reshmi kebabs chicken are being mass manufactured in dense hatcheries each bird on space barely the size of an A4 sized sheet of paper The recommended space is 4 feet Pigs are kept in enclosures just wide enough for their bodies Cows live shank to shank packed inside concrete stables their whole life never seeing the green of a pastureWhy is this a problem Think of picture postcards of old when you saw green countrysides dotted with grazing Guernseys and Herefords Cows didnt bump into each other mdash animal social distancing was always the norm A virus in one animal could not jump to another mutating and evolving each time Now thanks to our gourmet lifestyles virus are having an orgy of random mutation and evolutionJust like us our animals are standing too close together COVID19 is only the first of many pandemics on the menu Last year chicken pigs cows and sheep yielded us 320 million tonnes of meat By 2050 that number will have doubled to 640 million tonnesMy friend Sugata Mitra TED prize winner of 2013 and the man behind the school in the cloud revolution spends his quarantine doing useless and impractical calculations If you divide earths 24642757 square miles of habitable land by its population of 78 billion he says after adjusting for forests mountain peaks malls highways national parks and factories it turns out theres enough liveable land on earth for each human being to be given 15000 square metres of itThats too much reckons Mitra A human being with only 20 x 20 metres of land could do very well indeed with a decent room a garden with a pond and enough space for some animals and also grow rice some vegetables fruits and trees Altogether that would be 24 trillion square metres or 2 million square kilometres Imagine a country 2400 kms x 1000 kmsThat would be an area just a little larger than MexicoHere viewed from there C Y Gopinath in Bangkok throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai the city that raised him You can reach him at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates 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