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All of us, pedestrians, in our day-to-day lives are doing a cooperative dance whenever we are walking. We are dancing without even knowing we are dancing.

We don’t bump into each other. We have a weird (however, explainable) understanding while walking. While walking, we sense the space around us. These are objects like trees, stones on the walkway, a planter, a staircase, sudden steps, puddle, sand. These are also, and more importantly, people who are around us either walking or standing by the road-side shop or a tobacco shop, juice shop and the likes.

We naturally align to the rhythm of the group pace, we naturally avoid bumping into each other, we subconsciously are looking at each other in different ways.

Sometimes, it’s the body language, a peripheral vision capture when you see someone speeding up towards you or away from you, the speed of the person in front of you, the sound of the racing footsteps coming from behind, the increasing volume of people talking, the sound of the cars and how it might lead some walkers to change their ongoing rhythm.

There’s another interesting thing. People who are either on phone help up against their ear or with earphones on. I’m like that sometimes. Whenever I go for an hour long plus walks alone, I prefer either talking to my parents a bit followed by a podcast.

I miss out on all the signals that keep the natural rhythm of walking with a crowd. I don’t get the ambient sound or don’t pay any attention to them. I don’t hear footsteps, or any sound coming from any other sources.

I’m mostly registering visual cues without realising. I am focusing a lot more to focus on what I’m listening to than what’s around me. Only the absolute unique or absurd thing catches my eye. Most others get ignored.

We were never taught about these. We don’t even know we know this cooperative dance.