While coming back from New Delhi to Mumbai few days back by air, a sudden idea crept into my mind: how travel by air affects the sense of space in a person, I mean how it aids in reducing the sense of space in the mind of the traveler. Let me elaborate in detail.
I was in New Delhi at 10.30am, but by the time 12.30pm I was in Mumbai. I could not realize actually how I much I traveled. Perhaps the travel in train to cover the distance from Delhi to Mumbai (about 12-1300 km) could have given a different experience. You see places around, you pass through various geographical areas, various kinds of spaces, various kinds of people you see through the windows of train – all these make an imprint in your mind so that you can have something in mind to rethink, to analyze or to regurgitate.
The train stops at various stations, and you will see various people when you step out of the train, even you come across different types of food, very special to the locality, and sometimes you relish that food. For instance, when you go from Mumbai to Delhi you pass through states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan. What I am trying to point out is that at various stations, you will have special dishes which will give you not only taste of the food, but also the taste of the place and the people there, which will further imprint in your mind the developments, which you can analyze later, this richness of experience is unavailable in a flight journey, however long it may be. In flight the food is monotonous, almost it is decided by flight operators, and you have very little chance to have food of your choice, or the kind of verities, that you come across in train stations.
One more thing I am trying to emphasize is the length of the journey. While Delhi to Mumbai journey takes only 2hrs in a flight, by train it takes about 18 hours, depending on the train. For instance, while travelling for a long time, and through vast geographical spaces, you tend to remember the things, in short flight journey, or even long flight journey, which are mostly monotonous, you do not feel much like to stay there, or remember or cherish the monotonous things.
One more thing. And it is from my own experience. While traveling in train, I make it a habit to read a book of my interest. In fact, most of the interesting books I finished, I read in trains while traveling to various places such as my home town, or to other places. I really finished some of most interesting books while travelling. But this opportunity you miss in flights. Besides long queue for check in, and baggage and security check, the engine sound in flights is too sharp for the ear. You miss so many things; I mean you almost lose interest in study. The beginning is full of chaos, as people are helter-skelter to occupy their seats, and plus the sound of flight engine, make you uncomfortable to study. And even if you are determined to study, after one, two or three hours, you have to get down from the flight. In train journeys you have enough time for reading, or for doing some other things like preparing a paper, or writing some report and so on. My purpose in describing all this is that in the process, in the train, you remember that you did this finished this, etc. I think that further aids your process of lengthening space in memory, but which may not be possible in short flight journey. In fact flight journeys are usually short, unless until you are traveling abroad, or you are a trained pilot destined to fly aero planes.
By writing all these, please do not misunderstand me that I am discouraging travel by air. In fact aero planes (the invention) are one of the most wonderful inventions in the twentieth century. And this tremendous success what Roser Bacon visualized centuries ago, and started by great engineers and architects like Da Vinci, makes science almost equivalent to God, I believe so. It has made communication, travel easy, and reduced the time of travel tremendously. In that sense it is a wonder, and also it reflects the tremendous creative potential of human mind. As I sometimes think, how can such a huge machine (the aero plane) carrying hundreds of people fly faster than fastest bird, and fly across countries, continents, seas and oceans, that itself is a wonder, which makes me a devotee of science.
But equally importantly that travel too has reduced the sense of space, the sense of variety, as experiencing diverse aspects of life in a journey. I consider it a fact. I am not entering into the debate, polemics of which travel is better, whether one should travel by train or air, I admit every person has his or her likes and dislikes, but I argue that the journey in flight reduces the sense of space.
As in a story one took 80 days to circle the earth, in flight it is possible within a day or a two. But there is a difference. Crossing continents by road or sea is an altogether different experience, which air travel cannot provide. The flight journey makes life faster and quicker, but how far it aids the human process of creativity by reducing sense of space is altogether another subject of investigation.
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