There’s a concept known as the six degrees of separation, that says that all the people in the world are, at most, only six degrees away from each other in terms of being socially connected. That is, if you take any two people, they can be connected by a chain of acquaintances which will not number to more than six. It does not matter which two people you are thinking of – it will always hold true.
That means, you are only six connections away from knowing any one – any one of those people who walk the continent of your mind every day – and no one can push you any farther away from these imaginary companions. This proximity is not protected by your fervour; it’s protected by mathematics.
I wonder about this, sometimes. I think of all the people I wish I’d known, all the people I wish I’d met and talked to. I have met a few famous people in my life. I haven’t met – and will never meet – hundreds that I’d want to know personally. But sometimes I sit and wonder how close I am to some of these people in terms of the degrees of separation.
I was watching Troy the other day. I don’t know which people in the world Brad Pitt knows, but I know he knows Brian Cox, the Scottish actor who plays Agamemnon in Troy. And I’ve met Brian Cox. – It was only a signing queue, so it doesn’t really count as a meeting, but he did actually stop and gave me a look before he signed, because of the embarrassing fact that I was not carrying a pen, and was asking another guy to lend me his. Brian Cox has a resting face resembling a surly old lion that mislikes you. I have long lost the ticket that he had signed for me that day, but I have not forgotten that look.
In this day when celebrities interact with fans daily on the giddy columns of Instagram, nearness is commonplace. I can get lucky and score a Like from a celebrity on one of my comments under their post, I can even get a reply if the Fates are especially kind. Only the other day a friend screamed to me on chat how she had had a Like on her comment from the writer Neil Gaiman. I remember I was once similarly excited when the actor Hugh Jackman had liked one of my comments on Facebook. These do not count as encounters – there is not enough intimacy, not enough eye-to-eye in these exchanges. But I did meet an author or two, on a few occasions.
I met Sanjib Chattopadhyay, the great Bengali writer, when I was a student at school. He had come as a guest, and I was lucky to meet him twice – once on the night he arrived at Vidyapith and was escorted to his quarters, and then on the next day, as we boys gathered around him and walked as he made his way across a field. ‘Are the characters of Baromama and Mejomama based on real people, sir?’ – ‘Oh yes. There used to be people like that, you know.’
Being an acquaintance of Sanjib Chattopadhyay would mean being only two degrees away from any living Bengali author; but I cannot claim him an acquaintance. He doesn’t know me by name and face. But I do have a senior from school, Biswajit Ray, who is a professor at Visva-Bharati University and an author in his own right; and Biswajit-da does know me by name and face. So, I guess it is safe to say I am three degrees away from at least some Bengali authors of significance. I have a novel by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay on the bookshelf in front of me; I grew up reading these novels of his. An architect of my childhood lies only three links away from me, in this obscure web of invisible threads.
And of course it is only one link from Shirshendu to people like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg or Bob Dylan. – I had once known the elocutionist Bratati Bandyopadhyay for a few days. She definitely knew the poet Sunil Gangopadhyay, and Sunil knew the Beatniks, and they knew Bob Dylan. I do not know if Sunil knew Bob, but even discounting that – I am only four degrees away from the man who gave us “Blowin’ in the Wind“.
One can lie awake and think about things like this, deep into the night.
There are so many people I wish I had known or spoken to. I wish I’d met Stephen King and talked to him about childhood and memory, and about Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft. I wish I’d met George R R Martin and talked to him about histories and worlds and J. R. R. Tolkien. I wish I’d met Neil Gaiman and talked about stories. I wish I’d met Neil deGrasse Tyson, and talked to him about beliefs and facts. I don’t know how far removed I am from these people. It cannot be more than five, since Bob Dylan himself is only four links away. What about someone like Roger Penrose? It is going to be six, right? – Could be less. My senior Supratik Pal is one of the top physicists out there. He could very well bring Roger Penrose as close as three degrees away.
I can never meet David Attenborough. But I had once approached Gowri Varanashi through messages, asking for advice on a good snake book. She is one of the rare people who compose the vanguard of wildlife workers today. She – and her partner, Paul Rosolie – grew up watching Steve Irwin. So did I. I will never meet Steve, because he is gone, and I am not a wildlife worker. But I am just three or four degrees away from Terri, Bindi or Robert – the khaki family Steve left behind.
How far removed am I from Emma Watson? I never had a crush on Hermione or Emma like many of my fellows did, but after I grew out of school and Emma grew out of Harry Potter movies, I grew an admiration for her because of her work as a human rights spokesperson. How far from her, then? Five, I believe. Maybe six. Same with any of those faces that starred alongside her in those magic movies.
If I take into account the fact that I have classmates who are direct disciples of Swami Atmasthananda, a monk who had also given initiation to Narendra Modi, the current prime minister of India, then I am only three degrees removed from Modi, and at most four degrees removed from a number of important world leaders who are in office now. This also means I am five degrees away from the heads of Interpol, FBI, CIA, KGB – practically any of the clandestine services we see in the Hollywood movies. – I’d be lucky to be five degrees away from them. I wish I were a hundred degrees away.
I know a person who once had a momentary chat with the great cricketer Kapil Dev. I cannot count that verbal exchange as an example of acquaintance, but perhaps there is another burrow that can lead me to the world of sports. One of my seniors from school is Dipak Adhikari, who has served for many years as a professional cricket coach. I am sure he knows people in the industry, and I am sure they know people whose forms we see against the green when we watch sports on TV. Thus, I am only three degrees removed from any prominent cricketer of the day, and four degrees removed from most of the big names who’re retired, and five degrees removed from almost any great cricketer in the world. I bypassed cross-sports acquaintances in this reckoning – that would open up many more inroads. Being three degrees removed from Sachin Tendulkar means being four degrees removed from Michael Schumacher.
And what about sports that are not much on the front page? In 2016, a young lady named Danielle Reardon took 2nd place at Mr. Olympia, the most prestigious bodybuilding contest in the world. I know Dani Reardon, and that means I am two degrees removed from a whole host of contemporary athletes in the field of bodybuilding. I have never asked Dani if she’s met Arnold Schwarzenegger; if she has, I am merely three degrees away from knowing most of Hollywood. I don’t care much for silver stars, but I do have a strong affinity for Arnold and Sylvester Stallone, whom I’d definitely have met if I could.
There is another lady I know who is impressionally similar to Dani, though their fields are as different as apples and oranges. Kortney Olson is not strictly a sportsperson, although she is very much involved in fitness and athletics. She is a central figure of the GRRRL movement, which is a subject of discussion in its own right, but I’ll dodge that for the moment. I have spoken to Kortney once or twice, and she does know my name, even if she’s never seen me. If we take this Stallworthian acquaintance into consideration, then I am merely two degrees removed from names like Holly Holm and Sarah Bäckman. Take the chain further, and armwrestling legend Devon Larratt is just three degrees away, while the entire world of WWE lies at a distance of four degrees – Holly Holm knows Ronda Rousey, and Ronda has been in professional wrestling since 2017.
The scene grows stranger if I take a bit of history into consideration. Swami Atmasthananda, the monk I mentioned earlier, was initiated by none other than Swami Vijnanananda, who was himself a direct disciple of Ramakrishna – and brothers with Vivekananda. This makes me four degrees removed from Ramakrishna, Sarada Devi, Vivekananda and Nivedita. I had the incredible fortune to have as my teachers the singer Sabyasachi Gupta and the artist Panchu Gopal Dutta. Both of them were trained in Shantiniketan. Sabyasachi-da had learnt at the feet of Kanika Bandyopadhyay, while Panchu-da was a favourite of Ramananda Bandopadhyay. This means I am two degrees away from Kanika, two degrees away from Ramananda, and three degrees away from the mountain itself – poet Rabindranath Tagore. This also means I am four degrees away from Albert Einstein (and thus, five degrees from any foremost scientist of that era), and unavoidably – four degrees away from Mussolini, five from Stalin and Hitler.
“I read somewhere”, wrote John Guare in his play Six Degrees of Separation, “that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it A) extremely comforting that we’re so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we’re so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection… I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.” – Indeed, we live in a small world now, shrunken by the forces of paltriness and progression. We gave up the luxury of distance, bound ourselves with chains of endless proximity, while our souls cramp and shrivel in the bonsai pots of our lives.
There was a time when being far from the sky did not feel lowly, for the vast gap was filled with vast wonder. Now that we have made iron wings and gained the heavens, our tawdriness has ascended to the sky. It is six degrees, but I guess it’s always six degrees of separation now, never six degrees to communion. Yet I hope there is some fellowship in foreignness, some affection abiding in the aloofness we foster. Because the days grow very short, and in the gathering dark I cannot see the stars.