#1: An Entry in Slow Motion
The Private Life of Plants, Time, Embracing our Natural Speed
I’ve always stuck to the story of me being a slow creature. Every day, I take longer to boot up my system and every night, my energy descends a long spiral staircase before I can finally shut down. I take a mini lifetime to finish a book, submit way past deadlines, and most guests who accept my offer for tea wait with a bit of regret.
In this hurry-scurry-worry world, this brings a deep sense of shame and doubt in my worth and fertility. Though I write about late bloomers and the insufficiency of a single year on Earth, I still guilt-trip on this story and wonder whether I will ever reach my platform. It took me so much deliberation to realize that more than slow, I’ve been terribly impatient. In waiting for a pizza, in repairing friendships, in work and poetry and health and life.
Many of us have loved the drama of the animal world as shown on Planet Earth and Our Planet, with a backdrop of the quiet, green and brilliant landscapes of the world. For my impatient core, The Private Life of Plants, a show that preceded the two has been more powerful. It’s a thrilling expose on the eventful life of the seemingly still plants - stitched through chunks of time-lapse footage where they are seen blasting off seeds, performing endless shenanigans to ensure growth and reproduction, and even killing other plants.
After the shock wears off, an odd comfort and solemn inspiration remains for those of us who need to own our speeds. We can revel in our shared slowness with plants which renders our movement almost invisible to the naked eyes of those who expect from us. We can sense that our subconscious synthesizes every day and we gestate for longer periods of time. We can hope that there will be bees, butterflies and monkeys who will love us for our slow-brewed nectar and fruit.
I’m not alone in my slowness and impatience is hardly my individual condition. When my mother waited outside the trial room as I tried on 9 kurtas, without once touching her phone, it pushed me to observe our city-bred generation. We compare our speeds with each other, as if we were cars, and rage at the traffic, without noticing that we are the traffic. We cook two-minute dinners, even if it takes 48 hours to digest said dinner and adjust our romantic lives to the age of our uteruses. Unlike those who need speed to save and survive, we abuse speed to avoid emotions and uncertainty. Slowing down can indeed be a privilege, and yet the wealthier among us are seen shopping for the latest iPhone, never pausing to buy themselves a box of time.
It’s time to choose my metaphors. I have Bullet Train, Eno, Domino’s Pizza, and Jio Fiber 100 Mbps on one hand and murraba, nimbu achaar, Jane Fonda, slow-cooked-and-constantly-stirred haleem on the other. Or maybe to choose a vital perspective that’s not this black and white - of how ‘slow’ people can be quite fast at empathy, wonder and trying out an intentional life. This kind of speed and urgency, in our connection with other humans and nature, can beautifully coexist with life-long patience or as Rilke would say, to live as if eternity lay before us.
Lest I sound preachy, let me confess that even after this awareness, I very often end up in hurry, shame and sickening impatience. I still want to learn not time management, but time expansion. To listen to a very special friend who frequently acts as an annoying but adorable speed-breaker. To remember another loving friend who prophesied on my 18th birthday, that the gift I most need, is the gift of time. To practice patience at the post office, in the kitchen and in my politics.
It will take me longer to come out of the classic story of self-doubt and slowness, but something is different. Like right now, I see its protagonist quietly entering into this newsletter, wearing her kaala chashma, in slow, slow motion.
Shout out to newsletter inspirations: Nidsitis, The Alipore Post and the brand new Poetly ( @poetly_in)