Celerity- the congenital love of man

I think it is intrinsic to human nature to love speed. I have a predilection for the word "celerity", but I also know I will not win any popularity votes by using that word, hence I will not use it again here :). Right from childhood, most of us have this fascination for speed. Fast trains, fast cars and later on, maybe fast girls !! ;) I was no different (except maybe in the last item:). I have driven my father crazy by making him repeat, ad nauseum, the difference between Diesel and Electric Engines, Broad and Metre gauge trains, the Rajdhani and other Superfast trains, among others.
This liking for speed also manifests itself in sports. In cricket, the sight of a fast bowler making a batsman hop, shattering his stumps is always stirring. As a kid everyone wants to bowl fast. Its only the ones who are unable to do that try to bowl spin.
This same sentiment is carried over to tennis too. I loved watching Wimbledon. Big serves, quick rallies and a skidding surface while I hated the slow red clay of Roland Garros.

But there were certain incidents that niggled. I found it was very difficult to cycle slowly, for instance. But of course I didn't let that bother me much. It was much later , when I think I matured, that I seriously thought about this human fascination with speed. And I have been thinking of it ever since. Every case I think about leads me to the same conclusion-that speed is always the easier thing to deal with. It is when you slow things down that it becomes a more holistic challenge. This is my exposition of this matter with some examples that influenced me.

I will start with Cricket-my passion. As mentioned before it is impossible to not be bowled over (pun intended :) when you see Waqar Younis or Wasim Akram come up with those deliveries that seem to have a mind of their own and swerve like heat seeking missiles to find their target. Or see a still photo of a batsman airborne, swaying away, torso almost horizontal and smelling the leather inches from his nose. Or in another case, bat horizontal, making contact in front of his face with eyes closed. One must get roused by such images. For speed is something that is earthy. It thrives on the blood rushing to the head. That is the defining character of each of those images. Now think of spin in cricket. It is diametrically opposite. It is about trickery and deception, patience and skill, concentration and a war of attrition. When I see a spinner throw the ball up in the air, and I see it insidiously curving away in the air and later spit off the pitch, the batsman has to have so many skills. Stretch out, have soft hands,wait for the ball, resist the innate urge to swing wildly.... Anyone who has played street cricket will know this. It is so much more a mental contest, and one of the delights is to see a batsman stranded far down the pitch, look back to see the bails off and wonder how he had come so far down. This involves a far more subtle art-both playing and bowling spin and hence we have a dearth of both as compared to fast bowlers. Fast bowling is just about that moment and everything happens so fast there is not time enough for the mental processes to come into play. Thus fast bowling is mostly muscle and brawn while spin is wiles and temptation. During the test match at Adelaide there was a fascinating interview with Terry Jenner, formerly Warne's coach. His perspicuous observations on spin bowling were most instructive and he quoted Bishan Singh Bedi's words as a message for all spinners, that "Spin is in the air and break is off the pitch". Hence you have to go beyond the obvious to see and appreciate the nuances of spin bowling.

If we go to the green grass of Wimbledon, the surface is quick. Balls roll and die quickly. Rallies are short. And everyone loves it. Travel to the red clay of Roland Garros and its different. The surface (pun definitely intended ) is a great leveller :) The rallies are long, the ball bounces and sits up and some all time great players never manage a win there. The clay makes you stop and think. It gives you time to make a choice-where do you want to hit it, what shot do you play. It is not about impulse but contemplation. It has parallels with life-points don't come easy and one has to be tenacious, one cannot sit back and relax thinking a point is won. I feel it involves more skills than winning at Wimbledon and I have been able to enjoy the battles at Roland Garros all the more after I realised this.

Slow cycling is another example. When you go slow, your very balance is questioned. But it is quite easy to go fast. Even aeroplanes stall at low speeds, while high speeds are not a problem. My friend Harsha who learns Classical music also says that singing slowly and holding a note is what makes a good vocalist for that is when you are prone to error. Singing at higher pace is much easier.

Perhaps, to give a nerdy counterexample I will illustrate the case of the speed of sound as taught in high school . Newton thought the compression/rarefaction of air was a "slow" process and hence isothermal and calculated a value of sonic velocity which was found to be far below what was known. Later Laplace corrected it by assuming it is a "rapid" adiabatic process and the corresponding sonic velocity was accurate. Thus we have to be thankful that the process is rapid else sound would have travelled slower and many of our technological applications would not work the same. Its only in such matters that high speed involves intricacies.

I have perhaps given enough examples. Even as you read, you might have thought of some more. My idea is that speed or change is the order of nature. Time and thought, among all things flow quickest. Slowing things down is an attempt to resist change, in a sense. Hence such tasks are inherently more subtle. There is another more logical reason though. As pointed out before, when things are slower and you have to make a choice, it involves more than just your reflexes, it is about conscious thought. Speed is perhaps like war-once the first shot is fired, and the adrenaline flows, anyone can be brave. But the nerve wracking wait for an ambush is where the real test lies. Hence I love the beauty inherent in a slow motion video.

My point after all this is only that even as we continue to be enthralled by speed let us recognize that it is a natural urge, while next time you see Muralidharan or Warne bowl, and/or somebody play them well, take a moment to reflect that there is much more to it than meets the eye.