intimacy, food and patterns

An indian city lives in multiple times, with western styled hotels, fast food restaurants, bhajiya wallas, food stalls and dhabbas coexisting. Many city dwellers find themselves at ease at any of these places, but there lives a differentiation in the social structures that form at each of these places.

A society creates for itself spaces which lie at different levels in the 'intimacy gradient'. A multinational restaurant may allow you to create a personal space with no disturbance from others. But a food stall encourages conversations, much like the pubs in european countries. The kinds of food that attach themselves to the different kinds of vendors also fall at particular places on the gradient between public and private spaces.

The kind of social interaction and the level of privacy that is created of a particular space interacts with the preparation, presentation and service of food available. A waiter shouting out your order to the kitchen will not go too well in a fancy restaurant where a certain level of privacy is expected. The kind of space that is expected to be in a public sphere where people start conversations, needs to be open but also should allow a kind of a closure that creates a feeling of togetherness and safety.

Such patterns, in relation to architecture and now for digital social spaces are well documented. It would be interesting to learn about the structures and flows that create the intimacy gradient in an Indian city living in multiple times. Much of the food stalls and thelas are emergent spaces that attain a certain balance over time and a multitude of variables come into play.

The emergence of such spaces and the semiotics of their architecture, the materials used for the chairs, the kind of tables in place, seating capacity all in some way create a space that allows for certain forms of human groups to be comfortable. It can be said that the kind of utensils, the name of the recipes, the look of them, the texture would also be in a state of interaction with the social groups that consume the food. Maybe it is just economics, availability and taste.

But the complexity of social existence demands a look at such patterns, or the search for them. The hospitality of a people, their communal ties would in some way influence the kinds of food spaces that they create for themselves.