The Death of the Flâneur

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Ashoka chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

Edited by: Surabhi Aivalli

Paris, 1865: Footsteps squelch against the wet pavement, but his are silent. Carriages rattle past, hooves strike stone, hawkers shout, the crowd jostles forward. He does not match their pace. Shop windows spill their yellow light across the pavement; he pauses, not to buy, but to watch the shimmer of silk or the tilt of a passerby’s hat. He watches: the mismatched shoes of a street urchin, a torn poster peeling from the wall, the quick transaction of coins for bread, the way lamplight pools in the cracks of wet pavement. He knows—he knows that the lady behind him has forgotten to collect her change, or that the gentleman on the other side of the pavement has received some grim news. He notices the date on the newspaper someone is reading— yesterday’s.

Charles Baudelaire calls him the flâneur—the aimless wanderer, the detached observer of the banalities and intricacies of urban life. The third reel that pops up on my feed calls him, in the echoes of my grandmother’s voice, unemployed. Today, strolling without purpose is almost obscene. If you are walking without headphones, without your phone in hand, without somewhere to be—you are immediately marked as lazy, suspicious, lonely, or left behind. The city no longer tolerates drift. The pace of life has collapsed into transit and transaction: the metro you need to catch, the groceries you need to buy, the fifteen-minute slots you must justify to yourself and to others. Even leisure is scheduled—dinners booked weeks in advance, “self-care” parceled into hour-long blocks, holidays documented on Instagram to prove their worth. There is no space for aimlessness. There is no space for simply watching.

On a campus as happening as Ashoka, there is always something demanding your attention: lecture sessions, club meetings, concerts, or breakfast runs. Every hour is scheduled, every space mapped. There is always a reason to be somewhere, and a path that will get you there. You rarely move without purpose; even walking across campus is usually dictated by timetables, obligations, or errands.

The mess lawns are always a good place to start. Footsteps sink into grass that is always too neatly trimmed, too even, as though someone has been flattening the wildness out of it. Students cross diagonally in their practiced shortcuts, heads bent, earbuds in, racing the clock. Nobody looks up at the trees whose branches curl into one another like clasped hands. I watch a crow hop twice before taking off, and I wonder how many others even saw it.

Past the mess, the crowd thickens. Plates clatter, conversations spill over each other. The smell of food clings in the air, oily and heavy, worming its way into your clothes whether you ate or not. Someone’s tray crashes—metal on tile—and your shoulders flinch before your brain catches up. Strangers brush past too close, the heat of their arms grazing yours, and for a second you are caught in the undertow of their momentum. You are not choosing any of it, but you are made to feel it: the sweat, the noise, the throb of other people’s hunger. To walk through here without hurrying, without armour, is to let those sensations crawl over you and stick. It is suffocating. It is also beautiful, you think, as you watch two friends stand in line, scrolling silently side by side. A third joins, and without a word, they shift their formation to make space. The choreography of belonging, so ordinary it passes unseen.

The academic block hums with fluorescent light. Posters peel from noticeboards—last month’s film screening, a poetry slam already forgotten. On the steps, someone rehearses a presentation under their breath; inside, another dozes over an open laptop, screen glowing blue against their cheek. Here, time is always urgent. People carry it on their backs like invisible weights.

And then—Blue Tokai. There is something intimate about standing in line with strangers. The people beside you shift their weight, exhale, scratch their arms, and you find yourself breathing in time with them, as if you have been pulled into their nervous systems. There is no better place to house the variety of human experiences than a café. However, it also flattens difference into the simple fact of being here, together. For a moment, community is nothing more than synchronized waiting. When your name is finally called, it feels less like a transaction and more like proof you have endured something together.

There is a strange intimacy in walking without a purpose. Because you are suddenly exposed. There is nothing to shield you—not a destination, not a deadline, not even the excuse of being busy. It is just you and the world, colliding in real time. Every sound hits harder, every glance lingers longer than it should. Walking aimlessly strips you bare. You are porous. Everything seeps in—other people’s routines, accidents, leftovers—and there is no way to filter what sticks. That is why it feels intimate: not because it is soft, but because it is also invasive, almost uncomfortable, as though the world has crawled under your skin and decided to stay there.

And maybe that is why we resist it now. Aimlessness feels threatening in a culture that worships momentum. To walk without a purpose is to risk being swallowed by the city, to let it press into you rather than the other way around. It means surrendering the illusion of control. The flâneur knew this. He understood that drift was not laziness but a confrontation—a way of facing the city and admitting that it shapes you more than you shape it.

At the same time, there is a strange detachment. Nothing here truly belongs to you—every laugh, every footstep, every smell is borrowed. You absorb it all, yet carry none of it; it slips through you like water through fingers. The clatter of trays, the hum of fluorescent lights, the hiss of the coffee machine—all rub against your skin, claw at your chest, and still you remain separate. You observe it all like flipping through a storybook, and sometimes, you let a page lodge into your heart.

We have forgotten how to do that. We do not walk to notice anymore; we walk to arrive. Our eyes stay lowered to screens, our ears sealed with noise, our pace accelerated to meet the tyranny of timetables. The art of aimless wandering is fading, not because the city has stopped offering it, but because we have stopped allowing ourselves to receive it.

We have reached the gate now. I remember the first time I walked through these, just a month back. Perhaps that was the only time we actually saw it—because our purpose was only to observe, to see our new home for the first time. Past the gate there is a world that is faster than the red brick-walled lives we live here. That world, so big and bright, has a thousand reasons that demand our attention. And yet, in the rare moment when you pause to watch a crow hop before it flies, you feel it again—that trespass of the world into your body. A flâneur, in spite of yourself.