Slow motion in cinema is often mistaken for a slowing down of reality. In contrast, it is only a manipulation of perception achieved by recording more frames per second than usual and then replaying them at a standard speed, creating the illusion that time itself has stretched. Nothing in the world actually decelerates; it is merely a technical intervention, a carefully induced distortion that alters how movement is received by the eye rather than how it exists in the world.
But if one were to truly slow down the act of recording, if the camera were to remain open longer than the fleeting instant through which it ordinarily captures an image, the result would not be a clearer or more detailed reality, but something altogether different. The image would begin to dissolve into duration, absorbing time rather than freezing it, and what emerges would be strangely fluid, almost unreal, as though the world itself were slipping out of its defined edges.
I remember, in 2013, walking through the streets of Yelahanka Fourth Phase after stepping out from my former institute, where the director had been speaking about slow design and slow cooking; these ideas lingered, and I began to imagine not a world artificially slowed down, but one perceived through a slower consciousness. If the eyes themselves were to slow, vision would not sharpen but blur, much like the altered states described by Aldous Huxley in his reflections on psychedelic experience, in which perception loosens its hold on fixed forms and everything appears elongated, stretched, and un-contained. In such a state, nothing would retain a precise boundary; shapes would refuse stability, and the world would become a continuous unfolding rather than a collection of defined objects.
Yet in our everyday lives, to slow down is rarely permitted. A delayed response is quickly judged as incompetence, while a slower comprehension is judged as inadequacy. We grow impatient when our computers lag, when the internet falters, when colleagues delay, when institutions fail to move at the expected pace. One can imagine the discomfort—even the panic—if industrial production, economic systems, governance, or development itself were to slow down. In such a context, time is not merely a neutral flow but a controlled resource, and the ability to delay often becomes a subtle instrument of power.
Nowhere is this more evident than in bureaucratic systems, where delay itself can become a currency. The time one loses in waiting, the stagnation imposed upon a process, often translates into the unspoken cost of expediting it. The bribe, in many instances, is nothing but the price paid to overcome someone else's capacity to slow things down. Judicial delays, with their profound consequences, reveal how deeply the control of time is embedded within structures of authority.
The rhythm of time, then, is not external to life but intimately woven into it. Evolution has shaped our bodies and minds to operate within a certain pace, aligning perception, response, and survival to a temporal rhythm deemed essential. Although practices such as yoga emphasise slowing the body and extending awareness, I remain cautious about accepting such claims without question, as the scientific grounding of these experiences is often uncertain.
Still, the thought persists: What would it mean for the fundamental elements of existence to slow down? Imagine an electron losing its velocity, the earth reducing its spin, a clock slipping out of rhythm. And then imagine life itself slowing. What distinguishes the slowing of these physical systems from the slowing of lived experience?
As I carried these questions with me that evening and entered my studio, I noticed a car speeding along the road near the Puttenahalli buildings, cutting through space with urgency. I did not attempt to slow the car; instead, I allowed my own perception to linger, to stretch. In that moment, both in my eyes and later on the canvas, the world did not appear slower; it appeared transformed, estranged from its usual clarity, taking on a surreal quality.
(footnote: " For a long time, I had been painting Yelahanka New Town at night, believing that darkness offered a slower, more contemplative pace of seeing. But that day, I began to understand that it is not the world that slows down; it is the gaze that learns to hold time differently, allowing reality to unfold in less precise ways.")
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