Personal Space

Over the past 3 weeks I've been in Nepal, I've noticed that Nepali have very different notions about personal space. Maybe it is because there is less space to go around.

I first noticed it at the airport when I thought people were going to walk right up to me and ask me something (or I'm ashamed to say, maybe take my bag) and they were simply walking past me. It is the same in the city. Especially where traffic is concerned. In a bus, you cram as many people as you can inside and then people start hanging off the back and hopping on the top (hey, at least it's air-conditioned up there). On the street the cars and motorbikes get so close that several times I absent-mindedly had my elbow resting out of the side window and it just about got taken off (by cars going the opposite direction and the same way). It's often that I could have easily reached into neighboring cars and touched people through the windows if I had wanted to. I've seen 2 way traffic go in the smallest of back alleys, all the while they're manuevering around cows and pedestrians with enormous loads on their their backs and heads (just like you see in National Geographic!).

It is a sweet thing in the family and at school. The children are extremely affectionate. Even after a few days, the children in my family would snuggle up close to me or rest their head on my shoulder or leg just while we were hanging out. Last week during one of our normal several hour power outages, we curled up on the patio with blankets and just feel asleep. At school, I had to get used to students linking arms with me or grabbing me by the hand just merely to take my hand in theirs---no reason at all really, just to be close.

It is not uncommon at all to see men in public hold hands or to have their arms around one another as they walk down the street. The same is okay for women too, but really it's the guys that do it most. However, public displays of affection on the other hand are completely frowned upon and you NEVER see couples romantically linked in an embrace, definitely never a kiss, and not even holding hands. Married couples do not seem to be exempt from this social norm either; I took a picture of my host mom and dad at Anish's birthday party, and even there they posed like 2 strangers right there in their own home. On TV or in the few Bollywood (Indian movie industry) movies I've seen, the romantic leads barely kiss---like not even a peck. Even when you know that they're supposed to be kissing they always work in some trick of the camera or introduce a prop or a shadow. You can tell that the media has been heavily influenced and sexualized (like there's always a lot of undertones) by the West, but obvious images of anything you're never going to see. Homosexuality is a huge taboo as well. People don't even talk about it all. Ever.