Issue No. 1: Saturday Lunch, Musings on Slow Living and Going Back to Long-form Reading

Welcome to the August edition.

It’s 3 pm on a Saturday afternoon. Nabeel and I spent the morning doing a bit of weekend chores, and now we’re back home. His father is visiting us for a few months (as some of you might know) but because he’s spending this weekend with extended family close by, it was just Nabeel and I today for a long, leisurely lunch of some daal chawal and achaar. Now as he cleans up in the kitchen, I’m settling in on the floor of our living room, writing the very first issue of A Slow Afternoon :) There’s soft, golden light coming through the windows, I have some chai by my side, and I think it maybe feels like the right time for us to chat about what we’re all really doing here? :)

Now as we get started, I’d love for you to think about how we used to read newspapers. Remember, how we used to calmly read through opinion pieces, there were no comment sections so there was no race to express our point of view, no instant reactions. We wouldn’t be reading with half a mind as the other half prepared some response, no nitpicking over one or two lines. There weren’t several strangers voicing their thoughts right under, creating several mental threads for us before we even had a chance to fully process what we’d just read.

We knew how to sit with someone else’s opinion, whether we agreed with it or not. Our minds were able to compute them as ‘differing’ opinions vs ‘opposing’. Our capacity to experience rage over points of view was less, we were more ‘human’ with our expression, we knew how to let go. And if we wanted to discuss, we’d do it with a small group of people, in close circles.

I’d love it if we could do that here. A thought piece, that takes us back to the joy of actual reading, free of quick reactions, undiluted by phone notifications. Settle in ☼

So, the idea of this monthly ‘edition’ about conscious living has been simmering away in my mind since a while now. I remember talking to a friend of mine during one of our regular catchup sessions some weekends ago, and she said something to the tune of, “I don’t know, Shehzeen. I really don’t want this lifestyle for my child. I want to live better so he can live better. I want him to live more…what do we call it? Consciously? Slow?”