Krishna Shastri Devulapalli | Honk, but I’m not going any faster
Recently, a friend, an avid reader of both English and Tamil literature, made a most interesting observation when I asked her if there was a method to her picking a book from one language over the other.
“Well,” she said, “when I need to read, I automatically tend to pick up an English book first. If the book does the job of ‘earthing’ me, great. But, with the ability to read English on autopilot, if I find myself rushing through the book, I realise what I need then is a Tamil book. Because, with Tamil not being the language I think in, I’m forced to stay with the book, put in an effort, read like I’m walking up a hill. And that slows me down to the speed I need to be at. Isn’t that the very purpose of reading: slowing down?”
On the other side of the spectrum is another friend, who, bafflingly, is my favourite drinking buddy. We meet once a month to catch up over, well, a drink. Drinking, like reading, I always thought was about taking things slow. Inhaling the bouquet, listening to the clink of ice cubes, observing droplets of condensation slide seductively off the surface of the glass, feeling that velvety burn in your throat, remaining temporarily immune to the careening world outside, deluding yourself for a minute into thinking how cool you are… right? Not with this friend, no, sir. With him, drinking is a precision-timed military operation where, with coordinated watches, we begin at 19:00 hrs and end at 21:00 hrs, come what may. And all conversation, from the rise in his LDL numbers to the fall of the Sensex, from Lord Krishna’s message in the Gita to the Mysore pak in Sree Krishna Sweets, everything has to be force-fitted into those two hours. No concessions, no extensions. Why? Because my friend needs to wake up at 04:00 hrs every day, you see, for his meditation session, the main aim of which is to help him become calmer, slower.
In short, while I have a friend who finds ways to make reading, an act of slowing down, even slower, I also have another who speeds up enjoying a relaxed drink — again, essentially an act of slowing down — so he can be prepared the following morning to be taught how to slow down.
These two events in quick succession made me rewatch writer-director Berkun Oya’s Turkish drama, Ethos (Bir Başkadır), soon after. How could I not, when the universe insists everything happens in threes?
There are two kinds of storytellers. There are those who catch the viewer by the scruff of the neck and hold them hostage with twists, turns, baits and switches, and cliffhangers. They take pride in giving you no time to think or blink, and put all their effort into keeping you glued to your seat. These storytellers, capitalism seems to din into us every day, are who we need to emulate in our lives. We need to be that story, be that protagonist — quicker, slicker, pacier — if we want to be winners. Or risk being left behind.
Then there is the other, rarer storyteller, like Berkun Oya, for instance, who seemingly doesn’t care about the viewer, or what the world is telling him repeatedly about momentum. He is not fearful of being abandoned by the viewer. Heck, it appears he is not even aware there is one. He just wants to tell his story. In the only way it can be told. With characters who speak like real people, saying all they need to say, however long it takes, with the camera staying put for minutes at a time, punctuating the relaxed unfolding of drama with seemingly irrelevant shots of windows, spiral staircases and chocolate wrappers that could well be still photographs, ending episodes on the very opposite of cliffhangers, with sequences like a brother and sister sitting at right angles to each other and watching TV wordlessly... for three full minutes. And, in the process, makes you think of how much poorer your life has been because of meaningless speed, and prods you gently into revisiting those moments you didn’t experience fully because you were told you couldn’t take your foot off the accelerator.
Well, I’ve put it all together and come up with my resolution for 2025. I just got myself a bunch of art material. And I’ve installed new software in my comp, too. To make my relatively unhurried life even slower, I’m going to brush the cobwebs off my old, long-forgotten, nothing-to-write-home-to-mother-about artistic skills with a Size 3 sable-haired brush from my dad’s vintage collection, and attempt something that won’t come that easy.
Slow. Still. Less. Small. Here. Now. Those are going to be my words for the coming year. Looks like my drinking buddy is in for a surprise.