The World That Forgot to Look Up

Sri City : A few weeks ago, I went to this café in Chennai for breakfast. They had these long wooden tables, the kind clearly meant for groups. But when I sat down, I realised I wasn’t the only one sitting alone. Three other people were also at their own large tables, each occupying a space meant for many. Four people, four tables. No one looked up. No one even seemed aware of the others. It wasn’t awkward. It was completely normal. And that’s exactly why it stayed with me

Because somewhere along the way, this became the default. Public spaces have adjusted themselves to match it, single-person tables, tiny workstations, even pods where you can sit without brushing up against anyone’s presence. It’s all convenient, yes, but it also reveals what we want now: distance without discomfort. Proximity without interaction. Being around people, but never really with them.

I see the same instinct in smaller, tighter spaces, too. Like lifts.  The second the doors slide shut, everyone reaches for their phone, not to check anything cause there’s no network, but simply to have something to look at. Four strangers standing in a small box, each pretending their dead screen is more compelling than the living people beside them. I end up doing it too, almost out of muscle memory, like the screen is just the easiest way to pass those few seconds without thinking about anything else.

Even silence has become something we try to escape. The moment there’s a pause at the table, someone reaches for a phone. And the algorithm always wins. A stranger on a screen becomes more engaging than the person sitting right across from you. 

And it doesn’t stop in public. Even the way home used to be structured feels different now. There was a time when evenings at home were shaped by whoever grabbed the TV remote first. One television, limited options, and yet somehow everyone ended up in the same room. You sat through the news because your grandfather wouldn’t switch the channel. You watched football with cousins even when no one actually cared. It wasn’t about the show. It was about the low-stakes togetherness that happened because no one had a choice.

Now every show ever made is a click away, and somehow we still spend longer deciding what to watch than actually watching. Most days, we watch alone. No tiny fights over channels, no negotiations, no accidental conversations that grow out of being forced into the same space. It’s smoother now, more customised, more controlled, but the living room doesn’t pull people together the way it used to. Freedom quietly replaced company. Choice replaced conflict. And conflict, ironically, was what created connection. 

This distance shows up in smaller ways too. I like walking alone, or at least that’s what I tell myself. Half the time, my earphones are on, even when nothing is playing, a gentle “please don’t talk to me.” And it’s strange how quickly we reach for noise. Music, podcasts we won’t finish, reels that spill into five more. Even on a two-minute walk between class and the gate, we need something playing in the background. If we truly liked being alone, wouldn’t we be able to simply be? Why does solitude need a soundtrack?

Which makes me wonder, maybe we don’t love being alone. Maybe it just feels safe, a space where no one can interrupt, question, or need anything from us. A space we control completely.  And then, quietly, that instinct became a product. Distance got reissued with new labels: self-care, minimalism, boundaries, personal growth. A whole aesthetic dedicated to looking put-together while staying conveniently unreachable. The language is suspiciously effective, it turns withdrawal into wisdom, makes solitude sound curated rather than accidental. I subscribed to it for years without wondering whether I liked the solitude or just the marketing around it.

And it’s frightening how easy it is to believe it. How respectable “I need my space” sounds compared to “I don’t know how to be with people anymore.” Once you notice it, it’s everywhere, this quiet marketing of distance as growth, when sometimes it’s just avoidance dressed up as agency.

So then If we’re so scared of being lonely, why do we run from connection when it’s right in front of us?

I recently came across these supper clubs: long tables, ten strangers, shared meals, slow conversations. A curated version of the community. Which made me realise that we'll dress up, show up, and invest in strangers for one evening, but the people already in our lives rarely get that version of us. The dining table at home stays empty, while we sit at a rented one with people whose last names we don’t know. Maybe it’s easier because these strangers don’t know who we were before, don’t expect anything beyond those few hours.

Instagram makes the contradiction even clearer. Out of a thousand people on my feed, I probably talk to fifteen. And most conversations start with a reel. It feels like a connection, but it’s the kind that doesn’t interrupt your day or demand anything uncomfortable. Networking is easy like that. Community… not so much. Community requires presence. Time. The awkward pauses. Sitting with people even when you’re tired or distracted. Showing up in ways that aren’t always convenient. And while we’re busy building new circles, we don’t always notice when the old ones move on without us.

Noise-cancellation works a little too well. It silences the city, the footsteps, the tiny human sounds that used to tug us back into the world. Someone asking where the metro is, someone brushing past you, someone clearing their throat to get your attention, all of it disappears before it even reaches you. By evening, you realise you’ve spent the whole day surrounded by people without actually encountering a single one. And then, after an entire day of avoiding real presence, we log onto LinkedIn and call it networking. As if connection can be recovered through a profile view.

All the comfort we’ve collected: the control, the routines, the neatly curated days, didn’t take anything from us. It just made certain parts of life feel… unnecessary. The interruptions, the casual nearness, the tiny collisions that once came built into being around other people didn’t disappear; they were quietly filtered out, the way noise gets removed from a track until only the cleanest version remains. And maybe the unsettling part is how naturally we adjusted to that cleaner version of life, as if a world with fewer touchpoints was always the more sensible design.

In the end, it comes back to four individuals, four tables, an arrangement so ordinary, that it was hard to pretend anything about it was wrong.