Art of slowness

The madly rushed urbanite forever racing against the clock is finally putting the brakes on his fast paced life, and celebrating the beauty and fun of slowing down. It’s a savouring of moments, without an eye on the clock. The joy of a journey, without a must-do list. A celebration of style that has rootedness in its fibre. A taste of food that carries the flavour of tradition. It’s a pause to connect with one’s inner self, and embrace timelessness.

Adding a much needed pause to the frantic and frenetic pace of city living, the slow movement is gaining tempo and finding an increasing number of takers. The movement emphasises connection — connection to food, to families and, in the case of travel, connection to local peoples and cultures. It is a shift toward building more meaningful connections between individuals through Slow Living, Slow Travel, Slow Fashion, Slow Food and more.

Slow Living

Is the year seeming to pass faster and the seasons seeming to change sooner? Have the days become shorter? Then it is time to slow down and opt for slow living. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Slow living is a concept that promotes and advocates the same principle to make life happier and healthier in the face of increasing urbanisation. Life coach Ramon Llamba says, “The concept of slow living is a lifestyle approach that suggests slowing down and giving pauses for a longer and better quality life. Slow living makes us healthier: There is less stress, better relationships and increased well-being.”

Living slow starts with the individual creating space and connecting with nature. One needs to ask some basic questions like — how to find balance in our life and whether it is important to bring about change in our life. Holistic health guru Mickey Mehta says, “Slow living is a lifestyle choice where you take a more reflective and holistic approach towards living with harmony and balance, along with being strongly connected to people, communities and the environment. There is a slow but steady movement towards eating locally grown foods, promoting small scale industries and adding value to life.”  

Becoming more aware of the positive and negative aspects of the quality of our lives is one of the major advantages of slow living. “You can start by taking a few minutes at the end of each day to review and savour your favourite parts of that day. Over time you will begin to notice a positive pattern,” points out Ramon.
Adding to this Mickey says, “The biggest advantage of this choice is that you learn to celebrate, honour and support the bio-systems, giving back to nature and society.”

There are a number of strategies one could opt for to achieve a stress-free life. Some of the basic suggestions are — prayer and meditation, exercise, prioritising goals, patience and healthy eating. Ramon states, “It requires reconstructing your life around work, family and friends.” Slow living is also about introspection. One should celebrate life instead of making it a rut or a burden, says Mickey, adding, “One should lead a life of evolution and connect with the source inside oneself. With emphasis on simplicity, awareness, compassion, kindness and living with social responsibility, one can contribute to a better quality of life.”

Being mindful of our senses, desires and listening to our inner voice can provide a healing and restorative quotient. He avers, “It is not going to be easy but it is heartening to note that there is awareness towards creating a slow living world.”

Slow fashion

In our globalised and hyper-connected, instantaneous world, slow fashion is a return to the tangible and real. The term ‘slow fashion’ coined by sustainable design consultant Kate Fletcher, describes an approach to clothing and fashion that is decidedly at odds with the fast (and even faster) fashion cycle.

“Slow fashion encompasses sustainable fashion, but it takes a broader view than just supporting organic T-shirts,” shares noted designer Aneeth Arora whose brand Pero has become synonymous with natural fabrics, traditional prints and fully hand-stitched, hand-hemmed garments. “It’s about the consumer becoming aware of the whole process — from design through production through use and through the potential to reuse.

The problem with something like green fashion (or other movements) is that it’s still very much focused on the item’s consumption, whereas slow fashion addresses the whole cycle. It’s about reconnecting with our clothes, rather than viewing them as quick trends or throwaway items. It’s about tapping into the pleasure of buying a well-made garment with a timeless design, being able to recognise quality, repairing and properly caring for your wardrobe.”

Unlike machine-made garments, which are cranked out in uniform shapes and sizes, slow fashion is about process, quality, honesty and distinction. “Slow clothes are handmade at every stage,” she explains. “My artisans and I enjoy the process of making; it’s not rushed. We work a lot with hands so that reduces power usage. For instance, every buttonhole is done by hand. Very often it starts with the weaving, certainly the dyeing, the sewing, the inspiration is all done by hand by artists, which means everything is one-of-a-kind and if you buy it, you’re probably going to treasure it because it is not going to be seen anywhere else,” she says.

Adding further she states, “When a garment is produced by multiple hands and involves many hand processes, you get imperfection, which is like a footprint of the handwork. In a real sense these clothes have got life, while in mass production fast-fashion clothes are produced with perfectly fast fibres, like petroleum-based synthetics, which are so perfectly made and tailored that they lack life and liveliness. I like the fact that my clothes show a degree of imperfection and have a life. They have a story to tell and they show evolution in my technique and textile.”  

Getting consumers to buy less doesn’t exactly seem to go hand-in-hand when you are running a fashion line but Aneeth says fashion is all about embracing timelessness. “This movement is here to stay. Even though I showcase every six months, I have seen people including celebs wearing our clothes from our first season collection. Making clothes should not be tied to a season, using very lovely fabrics and thinking beyond the three-week fashion cycle is what the industry should reflect.

Outsourcing production overseas, where labour is by and large cheaper, not only contributes to our country’s unemployment rate and shrinking garment industry, but also helps keep overseas sweatshops and factories with unfair working conditions in business. Needless to say that slow fashion movement is more important than ever,” affirms the young designer who works with several artisans from around the country.

“People can express themselves and their own individual personality by just looking a little further afield than what’s in all the big box stores,” she adds and says, “Rich Indian textile is a time-consuming process and by going fast, none of us will do justice to it. India is a country where transferring pieces or heirloom is a fundamental tradition. So embrace the concept of slow fashion.”

Slow food

Slow food movement is an international food movement started by Carlo Petrini and focuses on the use of fresh local foods, grown with sustainable farming techniques, cooked via slow, traditional techniques, prepared with love and consumed in a leisurely manner in the company of friends and family.

Shopping locally and returning to our desi style of cooking is a key element to being a slow foodie. Fancy cookbooks might suggest exotic ingredients that need to be imported from miles away, but avoid these and go in for recipes that call for local ingredients. In slow food movement, a dish should be given its own sweet time to get cooked properly.

Chef Nawal Prakash, cuisine trainer and vice-president of Under One Roof hotel consultants says, “India’s culinary history has a deep-rooted connection with the slow cooking movement. Our cooking methods demand a certain time be dedicated to them. For instance, the Kashmiri butcher pounding away at his meat to get it right for the gushtaba balls and not mincing in a power meat mincer. Similarly, the Hyderabadi biryani is also a slow food product, which cannot be rushed.

Traditional methods like khud style of cooking still prevalent in the hilly regions and parts of Rajasthan can only be called a part of the original slow cooking movement. We have methods of soaking overnight, slow cooking and marinating of meat and so much more from the Indian culinary repository that speak of slow food movement. However, the advent of fast food chains and the Americanised restaurants led to customers demanding food in a jiffy. Eventually, processed food started creeping into the kitchens to speed up things. Slow cooking or the slow movement is essentially a return to our traditional methodology of how we treat our ingredients and use them in our cooking.”

Manish Choudhary, owner, TC Bar and Restaurant, Days of the Raj and Route04 in the capital puts forth, “The rush isn’t getting us anywhere, it’s only becoming a state of mind. Slow food movement requires time, and to take out time requires practical time management — the slow movement is therefore a movement from within us, and not an active movement we can join with flag marches and trendy T-shirts.”

Suggesting some simple adaptations in our daily lives to practise slow food movement, chef Nawal adds, “Tawa roasting the fresh and local spices and adding them to the dishes that we cook is one of  the simplest steps. Avoid a pressure cooker at home and instead use a pot or a degchi to make your humble dal and you have discovered one of the simplest joys of the slow food movement. Pound your own masalas rather than stocking ready-made spices in your kitchen.”
Slow food movement makes you look for family heirloom recipes passed down the generations.

“It is a great way to relearn some of our grandmas’ recipes and revive dishes that may get lost otherwise,” says chef Nawal adding, “The biggest drawback of this movement is that in our domestic environment we do not have time on a daily basis to practically cook using the slow food methodology or always cook using home-grown produce. Unfortunately, it ends up being restricted as a weekend hobby or a leisurely indulgence.”

Slow travel

In keeping with the central ethos of the slow movement, slow travel is the antithesis to zipping from one attraction to another in an effort to take in as much as possible of a destination before returning to an even faster-paced regular life. The idea is to take it slow, reducing the number of attractions you visit so that you are able to experience each of them fully. The slow traveller immerses himself/herself in the culture of a place by going as local as possible, renting a house instead of a hotel, cooking with local produce, visiting local markets instead of touristy souvenir shops and really spending time in a place to soak in its identity.

Wanderlust-bitten television actor Nandish Sandhu is gearing up for his first slow travel trip. “I am planning a slow travel trip to Thailand for 15 days. Many of my friends were surprised when I told them this, and said to me that 15 days is too much for Thailand! I’m committed to doing this, however. I am just booking airplane tickets and not making any hotel reservations. I want to go there and live with the locals, hopefully try out some authentic local food and explore different islands there on foot. I am looking to stay in a cottage or a local home, paying rent for food and boarding,” he shares.

Ask him what he finds appealing about slow travel in general and he says that certain places call for a visit that goes beyond simply scratching its surface by mechanically hopping through a line-up of must-see’s. “The Dead Sea, for example, which is just the most fascinating experience you can have, definitely calls for an extended, slow stay. I was there for a mere four hours, and would really give anything to go there again with at least two whole days in hand. I would then be able to soak in the spirit of the place, walk around to meet the locals, ask them how they live there, what kind of food they eat and just experience the local culture myself,” he says and adds, “I feel traveling should sometimes be about more than what can be seen. Just as photography is about seeing more than meets the eye, truly experiencing a place is about looking closely and carefully to find more than what your senses could initially capture.”

Having said that, the actor nevertheless admits that while slow travel is a wonderful concept, practical considerations might make it a better option to fuse it with a more conventional adventure trip. “It isn’t possible to slow travel regularly and everywhere for someone who is working round the clock with a limited number of days to travel. I think an ideal mode of travelling would be a mix of both — regular travel to some places that are known for their scenic beauty and slow travel to places known for their cultural value and historicity.”

Inputs by Aditi Pancholi Shroff, Nandini D. Tripathy and Geetha Jayaraman