A poster of the film Crash

A line from the 2005 Oscar-winning film Crash stayed with me for a long time. “We miss the touch, so we crash into someone just so we can feel something,” says one of the main characters. I was amused by the sentiment at first, but it seems true. The US is a country of many pleasures and privileges, but one thing that is often missing is the human touch, or rather the touch of another human being. And when you come from one of the most populated countries in the world — India — where at every twist and turn you run into someone, you notice it even more.

A few summers back my father was here on a month’s visit and in his quintessential style made many observations about the spirit and the people of America. I still repeat one of them to my friends for they find it humorous, though that was not his intent. “If houses in America did not have lawns and gardens, what would people do?” he asked one evening.

For weeks he had been noticing my retired neighbours venturing out of their houses only when they needed to tend their lawns, water the flowers or mow the grass. Of course, that’s not strictly true — they go out to shop, to church or to the coffee shop, but by and large for people new to suburban American life it can feel like days can go by without another person crossing your path.

In India its hard to avoid people, from the passengers on the minibus who want to talk about yesterday’s game at Eden, to the neighbour who wants to make sure the commotion she heard last night was not a burglar, there is no dearth of human interaction. Conversations are many, whether it’s with the dadas of the puja committee demanding donations or the doodhwallah in the morning or the talkative maid. In America it’s the opposite.

With double-income households, people lead busier lives than they did in the 50s or 60s, travel longer for work and have little time for social interactions. Right to privacy has progressively become a central principle in American life. With that comes the need for private space and “alone” time. When one is living as a student in a university town, it’s different. But for the bulk of the population in their middle age, with growing families and hefty mortgages, social interactions have become increasingly insulated.

With working folks out of the house — often from 8am to 8pm — it is uncommon for people to come by unannounced and often even phone calls with friends are scheduled in advance. Interruptions are few and far between. Socialising is routinely relegated to the weekends and visits by family members, including parents, scheduled months in advance.

This certainly makes life more structured and well-organised, but like any societal shift, it has brought with it new challenges. What do you do when you want to get quick feedback about a job offer but your friends are too busy to talk? Or as a newcomer to town you want to meet people in search of love?

The answers aren’t simple but solutions are being found. Romance goes online and even a technophobe starts trusting a computer programme to draw a match with a potential partner while the hairdresser at the neighbourhood salon ends up becoming your support system, willing to listen to your daily dilemmas. And at a hefty cost, your therapist becomes your sounding board, often your only one.

But while it seems strange at first, privacy is an easy habit to acquire. It’s nice when guests always give you advance notice before turning up at your door, when office hours truly end when you leave the office and a dinner does not grow cold while some relative of a relative routinely calls you at the most inappropriate time.

But on a day like today with the temperature soaring in New York, much like a hot day in Calcutta, it is easy to yearn for that completely predictable conversation with the doodhwallah about rising food prices and increasing power cuts. It may be completely humdrum or unnecessary but it brings in a reassuring human touch — and that’s probably an easier habit to acquire.