Numerous things make our life joyful, entertaining and exuberant, one of them happens to be the people in our surrounding, in other words, the crowd.

A crowd completes the picture of our world, it is an essential part of life which we can’t eliminate. And if you want to eliminate it, consider a scene from the movie 28 Days Later where there were no people and the protagonist was standing all alone in the empty street. I am sure you wouldn’t want to be part of a crowd-less place.

But crowd can be of various types, they can be the cause of happiness and can be a nuisance. For instance, if you are in a reserved or formal gathering, you expect the crowd to be very elegant. But that may not always be the case as people can be unaware of the social norms of a formal gathering. Or you may be performing in front of an uneducated and underprivileged audience, but again it is not necessary that the crowd around you will not be well-mannered. Most of the times, it’s your luck that decides whom you are surrounded with.

Then there are other kinds of crowds that we have to willingly and unwillingly deal with. For instance, you are out in the market buying vegetables and a man passes, spitting the paan he has been chewing right next to you. And many of us have seen sellers of various edibles, or the naanwala at a tandoor, scratch their head and neck or even pick their nose and selling eatables with the same hands. This is enough to make you want to puke.

These kinds of crowds are not restricted to markets only, as there are many other places which expose you to such people, like the shopping mall, cinema, school or an office, restaurant and hotel.

Schools and colleges are not any better, where students think that they can do whatever they want to. Usually, these students start their conversations with a swear word and end it the same way. For them, life is nothing but a platform to mock your friends, even if they are your besties. However, thanks to some pleasant and attractive crowds, many people still give value to manners and decorum.

Strolling down the hallway of a posh hotel, browsing through different shops in a good shopping mall and spending time in recreational activities surrounded by a good crowd, is like heaven on Earth. And when one travels in a private car or taxi, one doesn’t have to experience any pushing and shoving, which is a common scenario in local buses that carries a different class of crowd.

Well-mannered people make our surrounding enjoyable, but the problem is how do we make that possible? Our surrounding maybe splendid though we would be standing amidst the poor and illiterate people, and our surrounding maybe unsatisfactory even if we are in a very high profile meeting. The idea is to accept everyone as they are and stop being a racist or a snob. Every gathering and every crowd has its own beauty and colour, they make our life complete, we are part of their crowd and they are ours, thus creating a perfect balance that we should all appreciate and live with.

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 18th, 2019