One of the oft repeated quotes is Time is precious, (Don’t waste this time) it will not come back. Add to that - make the best of it & this becomes the mantra of our generation. Max It. Most of the time you feel like you are on a treadmill. Even if you don’t feel that way the sense of speed & achievement is pervasive - we have to always do something.
How do we slow time even if it’s for some parts of the day? In the seen and the unseen podcast which I was listening to yesterday, where Amitava Kumar was the guest, there were a lot of interesting anecdotes on time. His relationship with time is that he keeps taking notes, doodles and maintains a journal (which he has published as ‘’The Blue Book’ recently) & the reason he does that is because then he can see the doodle or passage at a later date & which would bring back memories associated with the note. He says that is the way he respects time.
What I like about the concept is that it is an interesting way of slowing down time. As I am writing this I am thinking in multiple ways what does time mean to me and in that sense I am slowing time, observing my thoughts and single mindedly focusing on answering that question without any distraction.
If one takes time as linear the only association you can have with time is memories. So for me time in the past is about memories, I have snatches of memory and not a photographic memory like many people have. I also maintained a journal from a very early age and it really helped me grow and understand things as I explained things to myself. Everytime I wrote and closed my diary I could feel a sense of calm.I started writing blogs also in a way to capture the thoughts that arose in my mind on seeing something or reading a book / seeing a movie.It was only hearing the podcast that I found a new meaning in writing the blog. It altered the frame of reference from people to me.
Last week, Thanks to my film appreciation discussions I got to see quite a few black & white Hollywood movies ( 30’s / 40’s). For one of the discussions we saw the Nightmare Alley - 2022 version starring Bradley Cooper & the 1947 version starring Tyrone Power. I saw the 22 version first and the 1947 version later and it brought out the stark difference in story telling - the simplicity of black and white, dialogues delivered so naturally that you will feel like a scene unfolding in your village and not on a screen.The older movie stayed with me for a long time and I kept remembering the way stories were told to us when we were growing up and we would visit our extended family in Kanpur or Assam and listen to all kind of stories sprawled on the verandahs with no notion of time.
For me one way of slowing time is to keep going back to movies by Basu Chatterjee or Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Whenever I saw these movies I envied the pace of life in those days - slow & languid, long drawn out conversations, cups of tea going around and people telling jokes as well as sharing family concerns without looking at the watch constantly. Those were the days when conversations and storytelling was more important than keeping track of time.
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