The tortoise at the Olympics

Everyone knows the three Latin goals of the Olympics: citius, altius, fortius! That is, “faster, higher, stronger.” Remember, it is not only since the 1896 Athens Olympics that human beings have set such mad ambitions for themselves. From the very beginning of their existence, they have thought of these as desirable, as fulfilment, as success. And not only humans—animals too must have learnt, at the cost of life itself, that these matter.

When a deer is chased by a lion or tiger, or a fox by a dog, or a harmless passer-by with an umbrella by a mad bull, they do not waste time on greetings or philosophy. It is simply: "Run for your life!" Forgive my use of English here—the urgency would not have come through in Bangla. Those who could not run like the wind became food for the big cats or were felled by the bull’s horns.

On the other hand, the hunters too must have thought: run faster, run harder, catch that prey—or else tonight you will be chewing leaves or going hungry.

The demand for speed laid on both sides: for the one who wanted to live and the one who wanted to kill. This was a philosophy of “winning.” The urge to run, to be quick, is therefore very primitive. Animals run to hunt, prey run even faster to save themselves. That is the first metaphor of running.

Humans separated themselves from animals when they moved from caves, nests in trees and burrows in the ground to permanent dwellings—of clay, bamboo, tin, brick, cement, glass and steel. Yes, a counter to running—a shelter to return to, to rest, to sleep. They made seats, chairs, beds, brought fans across time and culture, then ceiling fans, then air-conditioners. They thought: this is where I stop running. Outside, I must run, but my home, my “home sweet home”—this is my Banalata Sen’s eyes, my return from the grey worlds of Bimbisara and Ashoka, from the seas of Ceylon and Malaya. A place where wife and children wait for your return.

Why Jibanananda’s poet-persona was running so hard, I do not know. But that humans are driven to run has a cause like the hunting animals—the stomach’s demand. One must eat, one must feed wife and children. I say this from a man’s point of view, but women too long ago joined the run. To office, to business, to school, court, factory—before that, to school, college, the tutor’s house—always running. Alarm clocks ringing, mothers shouting children awake, a quick wash, breakfast, running to school, to tuition, homework at night—run, run, run! In Bangla-medium schools a child might read in Aparup Krishna Bhattacharya’s poem of the bee that flies away dancing, and tells the little ones, “there is no time to stand still!” They get countless lessons against idleness, from poets of many times and tongues. And when studies are done, it is the run to the office. Run to the street, stand in line for the bus or minibus, then let the machine run for you. If you live outside Kolkata, you join the rush of the “daily passengers.” Run to the station, leap into the last coach of the moving train, catch your breath.

Does the running stop at the office? I do not know. Folk wisdom says the government and private offices differ. In government offices, they say, on arrival one first tells the bearer to switch on the fan and bring water, then rests from the morning’s run with a nap. After waking, one has tea. If a client comes, they are not invited to sit; the officer picks his ear, swings his leg, then says, “come another day.” He may well be a weary victim of the race. I have even heard that once some teachers, especially the maulvi or the panditmoshai, would doze off in class. Perhaps they too realised long ago that this endless running led nowhere.

But I hear that those who work in today’s private corporate sector suffer terribly. I see them leave at seven in the morning with a bag on their back, run to Salt Lake’s Sector V, spend ten or twelve hours there, then run back. After Covid, with “work from home,” this physical running lessened a bit. Otherwise, I hear, they were mockingly called “IT coolies.”

All this is like the prey’s plight: running for one’s life. Only the beasts chasing us now are called poverty, hunger, humiliation of failure, the shame of falling behind in society. The race with the neighbours, the next door Joneses. These do not chase with teeth and claws, but lie in wait in the mind to pounce. One cannot fall behind. To miss a day’s newspaper is nothing compared with falling behind in these races.

Like the beasts, humans run to survive, but competition soon enters the race. The goal is no longer mere survival. I will get ahead, I will trample you if I must, shove you aside! Even if I do not push, I will go first at all costs, whatever happens to you. Hence I hear of parents queueing from dawn for admission to prestigious English-medium schools, jostling in line, telling their children never to let anyone copy from their exercise books, declaring: "You must be first, if you score under 95 per cent I will kill myself!" Animals too compete. Many fight and battle over mates—I don't know whether that too is a race. As for food, I see the fight with my own eyes every morning.

Every morning about half past six I feed the crows balls of flour on the roof. The neighbours’ crows know it, wait for me, caw impatiently if I am late. I try to give each its own portion, but many push others with their feet, rush at them. If I throw the balls on the ground, they even bite each other. Yet there are opposite scenes too. I have seen a crow take food and push it into the beak of its hungry chick beside it.

Still, perhaps there is no escape from running for humans. Running for prizes is recent—the victory stand, places one, two, three—but the race for survival, success, name, wealth, power, comfort began who knows when. Civilisation itself made travel into a race. As much as the body runs, imagination and dreams run a thousand times more. While living in the present, the mind leaps into the future, leaving behind the fairy tales of the past to create science fiction. From bullock cart to motor car, from hand-pulled rickshaw to battery rickshaw, from boat to steamer to ship, and then flying like birds in aeroplanes, helicopters, rockets. Who will stop this race? Since the Upanishads said, "Charaibeti, charaibeti"—“go on, go on”—there has been no rest. Rabindranath too, forgetting his own contrary words, urged on in old age: “not here, not here, elsewhere, elsewhere,” “only rush, only rush, wildly away.”

Yet humans and civilisation have realised that too much running is not good. Hence speed limits—80, 60, 40, 30 kilometres per hour, as required. In my youth, driving in a wealthy country, I saw that even on highways one could not speed; helicopters hovered overhead, relaying news to police cars which swiftly caught offenders. But there too the opposite: drive slower than the limit and you were fined for hindering the race of others.

Yes, humans also say “go slow,” they also say stop. “That I may cease in peace when my song ends.” Perhaps that is why the English phrase “taking it easy” arose, not as praise for laziness but to recognise the need. The fable of the tortoise: “slow but steady wins the race.” But no one says: if one is fast and steady, must he lose? I agree that blind, breathless haste that exhausts one is pointless. Tolstoy’s peasant in 'How Much Land Does a Man Need" taught us that. A theory of art too sings of the greatness of rest, saying leisure is necessary for imagination and creation—the Leisure Theory of Art. We often hear the reproach, “what is the hurry, sit a while!” People say, take it slow. The Assamese, I hear, have made lahe lahe—slowly, gently—a philosophy of life. Following Tagore, one feels like saying: “why rush so under heavy burdens, stop this journey.”

The truth is balance. Run when needed, but also stop when needed, rest in the shade of a tree. I once read in Bibhutibhushan’s diary: “speed is life, the loss of speed is death.” It sounds striking, but I no longer believe it. Between speed and its total loss are many stages and continuities. We need running, yes, but running towards definite goals, not like the foolish hare falling asleep midway. And when we reach a goal, we must enjoy the gain too, take leisure. The human creature needs work, but also rest, also recreation—the workers who gave their lives at Chicago’s Haymarket in 1886 left us this inheritance. Personal wishes and habits may alter it, but the acceptable limits will always be studied.

The point is: whatever can be increased, decreased or stopped, humans should control it thoughtfully, for their own good and the good of the world. Light and dark, sound and silence, the pace of machines and of life, even wild ambition—let these be brought under rule and beauty. Not only at the end of the song, but within the song itself, may one find repose.

Having said all this, I almost feel like some great sage myself.

Pabitra Sarkar: Linguist, writer, theatre critic, educationist and researcher.