Indian crossing (Photographer: George Jahnsen)
In one of the Mumbai's forgotten neighborhoods, on this one Sunday, at this one intersection, it happened again that nothing went on. Cars, rickshaws, hand carts, cows, goats, standing around, loose objects and a lot of people were suddenly wedged into each other without touching it. Respectful be wedged together. It was with the Hands waved and organized noise. This usually helps with their own progress in Mumbai. Not so in this day and at this intersection. In the end, each tried to free the last few inches to win the right. But because the situation was just dodgy. The last possible gaps that still had a way out can be used, joined. A final general honking and shouting reared up. And then there was silence.
Where the crossroads of two paths meet, people. Communication and interaction take place. Consensus and compromise must be found. The individual interacts with the community. A cross is perhaps one of the best places to reveal the social context. How do people deal with rules? As they bring their own personal interests to move forward with the abstract interest of the public in line?
Each individual term in this second, that his own progress was out of his own power. Suddenly it was there, this sense of responsibility for the umbrella body of the great knot of men and metal and garbage, and animals. The first looks broke away from staring straight ahead, onto the blunt own goal directed be. Eyes explored the environment, the whole situation and the neighbor, who was as trapped as oneself. And suddenly the miracle happened: objects began to move backward. Space was created. Previously hard-won space was returned to the intersection. The node resolved itself slow.
The way the Mumbaiker a cross crosses can be transmitted to the way the Mumbai-built works. The city built a treatment form: space is radically appropriated. Parent Community interests are happy to disregard. And this is practiced by all social strata Sun While the multi-millionaire with a new high-rise reinforced concrete residence times just ruined a historic residential district, the masses of the poorest urban space occupy every square meter free with their spontaneous architectures. Mutual respect, understanding and higher-level rules, which are based on the entire community could either does not exist or they are constantly undermined by appropriate means of individual actors.
Everything on the intersection in the city built the only constant daily anarchic chaos with the people must come to terms. And only now and then brings the random situations where common goal is achieved.
