The historical ten seconds barrier for the hundred metre sprint was broken for the first time in the 1968 Olympics by Jim Hines. More than four decades passed before Ussain Bolt of Jamaica could reduce the timing further to 9.58 seconds in 2009. It may yet be many decades before the timing is shrunk by another fraction of a second. Ultimately, there has to be a full stop to such improvements. Even God stopped creating things faster than light after creating it aeons ago. Mankind, however, never tires of epithets like faster, longer and higher. It ultimately fell upon Covid-19 to make us realize that there is scope for achieving new heights or depths by slowing down.
Since the beginning of civilisation, mankind has been obsessed with speed. Rare was a man charmed by the beauty of languidness. We praised the tortoise for winning the race so much that the poor hare never had a peaceful shuteye again. Our unidirectional thinking just doesn’t allow us to appreciate that languor can add grace to our movements. Ask stargazers who take delight in watching the gradual enveloping of the bright face of the moon or sun by the dark shadow of planet earth. Ask someone who has watched a chick crawling out of an eggshell to take the first shaky steps.
We hardly ever notice the charm even mundane activities acquire when undertaken at a leisurely pace. Just compare the jerky reaction to the morning alarm on a working day to those lazy moments on a Sunday, when you are in no hurry to gulp your morning cuppa and rush to dress up quickly. The languid moments rest in your memory like a precious treasure till next Sunday. Grandma’s advice that every morsel of food should be chewed thirty-two times is good not only for your own digestion. Watching you eating it leisurely also brings immense joy to the person who spent hours in cooking the meal. There is no end to the languid activities you can indulge in, particularly in these Covid times.
If you have never picked up your newspaper from the doorstep unhurriedly to watch a lonely ant crawling from one corner of the folded page to another, the time to do it is now. Avoiding unnecessary forays away from home during these Covid times. This, in fact, is an opportunity to immerse yourself in deliberate slow motion. Once the humdrum routine times return, you might never get the opportunity to discover what pleasure a cow derives from philosophically chewing the cud. Ruminating can be illuminating.