Tortoise

I like speed. Within some reasonable parameters, I consider it a virtue. This is not specifically talking about driving a vehicle, but about generally being fast - in thought and in action. There is inherent relativity in the concept of speed, between individuals as well as between cultures. Different cultures may ascribe different values to ‘fast’. A mail forward that I had read long back talked about how decision making tends to be slow in Scandinavian  companies. That it is usual to take a year to decide on a particular aspect, not because of lethargy but because of the process and deliberations involved. Despite these examples, I think speed is a revered trait across civilisations. Speed is the essence of competitive spirit, which is the cornerstone of human society. I cannot think of any sport which awards the slowest.

In the environment I have grown in, speed is unequivocally a virtue. It is ingrained in the psyche to be fast, as fast as possible, to relentlessly pursue speed. It is hard to think of any situation which would require one to be slow, possibly only in speech. But I am referring to specific community or family biases. Thus I have grown up ingrained with continued focus on speed. This I have adopted in almost all aspects. And it has become an endless endeavour - to be faster.

In some aspects, I am proud of my speed - my walking speed, my eating speed, speed in softwares like Excel. I have found few people who could match my walking speed. Often when walking with somebody, I tend to get ahead and then check over my shoulder to make sure the person is not too far behind. I find it rude but have not been able to help it. I am sure it is demeaning to anybody, but I presume that at least my family members understand. Similarly I tend to eat quite fast, the matter being topic of much discussion on office lunch table. And I enjoy floating my fingers over the keyboard. In all these instances, one corollary is that I easily get disgusted with people with relatively slower speed - I find it such a waste of time when people walk slowly, or take long to finish their meals, when my subordinates take so much more to finish an assignment when I could have done it in half the time. Or when people of the vintage which has acquired computer skills much later in life, type in hunt and peck style, or press each command with mouse instead of using keyboard shortcuts (press Copy - minimise window - maximise another window - press Paste instead of Ctrl+c - alt+tab - Ctrl+v). I tend to remain edgy in all these instances. I feel like I am a ticking time bomb.  

But there is one area where speed is a concern - in conversation. This manifests in two ways - trying to preempt the other person’s thoughts, and in speaking rapidly. When in discussion with somebody I try to foresee another person’s argument before he has made it and start giving my arguments even before he has finished. So I get restless when somebody is make laboured points. Most often I end up interjecting, with my mind saying “yeah, yeah I know what you want to say”. And then I speak fast, again with a ticking timer in my mind, under the impression that the window of the other person’s attention is fast closing (as is the case with me) and I have to finish quickly.

Speaking too fast has been an innate trait. But it has been further entrenched due to all the Group Discussion coaching I took for my MBA admission. These GDs were proper gabfest where the only agenda of each participant is to outdo others in terms of the air time taken, irrespective of the content. There is an urgent need to be heard and people tend to go over the top. So people like me who have feeble voice and non-aggressive, non-smart temperament had to find some space. This meant almost interjecting others, waiting for a lull and pouncing on it. There has been a gradual conditioning and I have developed Pavlovian responses. A lull in conversation makes me uncomfortable. If timed, I am sure I would not be able to handle more than two seconds of silence. I start twitching. I am a terrible conversationalist.

This apart, I have liked my speed in most things. I have enjoyed doing things fast, it makes me feel confident and optimistic. But now I am in the process of absorbing a new realisation - that speed is not important, or rather, being slow is better. A lot of things are driving me to this thought. Foremost is my physical and mental struggle with anxiety. What I have experienced in the last few months are levels of anxiety which affect the health. And when you are going through an experience or a thought process, you tend to consciously or subconsciously gather information pertaining to it.

I read about Sudarshan Ramakrishnan, MD in Goldman Sachs, India, a top level position in the field of finance which is likely to entail stress. He admitted to having anxiety issues for more than 10 years. And the way he has described it is: “Anxiety is when your body reacts to outward stimuli with a fight and flight response. My body tends to go into protective mode under natural stimuli." Importantly what I am referring to here is a mental disorder and not a physical one. While physical repercussions may follow, but the root is the mental condition of ‘worrying too much.’ Reading this, I wondered how could a person with such a state rise to the level that he did. Then I read a Linkedin post about a person who is a trainer on managing stress and anxiety issues. This guy also had a panic attack 10 years back which led to a stint in hospital. The gist of his post was that a friend counselled him in hospital to the effect: “You need to slow down. Nothing is that important. Nothing is waiting for you. You possibly think too fast, or walk too fast which needs to stop. Walk slow, for once let the body drive the mind.” This idea resonated with me.

I am not saying that speed is the only cause of my anxiety. I know there are other factors but focus on speed is an important cause. Speed is inherently stressful on the mind and the body. Arianna Huffington is an author and businesswoman, with strong pedigree in the field of media, both print and television. She has campaigned for many causes, and her latest one is named Thrive. It is about “using scientifically proven methods to decrease stress and burnout and improve overall health, happiness and well-being” (10 years ago, Arianna herself collapsed due to exhaustion, and broke her cheek bone). While the initiative is directed towards corporates and I think has commercial interests, there were some suggestions which I read in an Arianna interview that made me take notice. Cutting through a lot of gyaan, relevant inputs were: “We don’t believe in work-life balance. The reason for that is it is not just work that stresses people, it is also what they are doing with their lives after work… People need to stop bragging about being busy. A lot of us are not conscious about our addiction to technology. We are living in what is known as the attention economy…. working to develop ‘Jomo’, the joy of missing out.”

The message here implicitly talks about slowing down, of not being over-charged. Most of us will link speed with ambition. Not being fast equates to being dull, lacking vigour. It is presumed that successful people (whatever success means) have to be fast. Because there is so much to be done, speed is essential. Multitasking is considered a must in the twenty-first century. This brings me to the lifestyles of some famous people that largely negates these arguments.

Charles Darwin: Charles Darwin published 19 books which includes On the Origin of Species. His everyday routine went like this: He would take a long walk and eat breakfast before 8 a.m. Then, he worked for 90 minutes in the study. Next, he'd go through his letters. Then he'd lie on the couch and have his wife Emma read out a novel. At 10:30 a.m., Darwin would head back to the study and work until noon. At this point, the remainder of his day would basically be work-free — more walks with his fox terrier, writing letters, reading the newspaper, more storytime with Emma, and eating meals.

G.H. Hardy: one of early 20th-century Britain’s leading mathematicians, he started his day with a reading of the cricket scores over breakfast, then focused on mathematics from 9 am to 1 pm. Tennis and long walks filled his afternoons. “Four hours creative work a day is about the limit for a mathematician,” Hardy said.

Charles Dickens: author of more than a dozen novels, he adopted a methodical and orderly schedule. From 9 am until 2 pm, he wrote in absolute quiet, with a break for lunch. After five hours, Dickens was done for the day.

Similar routines are attributed to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, W. Somerset Maugham, Anthony Trollope, Ingmar Bergman, Henri Poincare, Thomas Mann, and Mark Twain.

There are many lessons to draw from these examples. But the one most relevant to me is that a lot can be achieved in the given time. So why to hurry? One can overlook these examples by calling them geniuses but that would be missing the point. Agree, these are examples of a different era. That means this stress on speed has a lot to do with the present lifestyle. While this is a separate point of discussion, I believe it is possible to overcome the demands of the present times and maintain a languid routine and approach to life.

  

Now I mostly wonder, ‘why speed?’ What purpose is served by doing things quickly? There is so much time, so why hurry. I observe people who eat slowly as if pondering over each morsel, who speak with much deliberation. And I find them more clear headed. Speed seems to be unnatural, contrived, and mostly unnecessary. The natural state of nature and everything in it is more relaxed, almost languishing. Nature shows speed very infrequently - say in a predator chasing a kill, or in the fury of a river or waterfall, or in a volcano or a quake.

Hunt and peck is fine!

Cherry-Garrard

<this piece borrows heavily from Wikipedia>

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

- Ulysses by Lord Tennyson

I came across an astounding story. Apsley Cherry-Garrard is not the protagonist because of any special individual achievement, but mainly because he was the most unlikely and incapable member, and yet ended up being the only voice and chronicler. Terra Nova was the second expedition to Antarctica (1910-1913) by Robert F Scott.

This was the eponymous age of discovery, when the European colonial powers, acting as custodians of humanity, were in a race to explore new lands. It started with the Portuguese and Spanish, but later British emerged as the front runners. It was not all about colonialism, this age of discovery coincided with the age of science - advancements were being made in all scientific fields. Exploration of the two poles was the piece de resistance because it combined everything - finding new, uninhabited lands, thrill of a race to set the flag first, and endless possibilities of scientific discoveries. Race for both the North Pole and the South Pole were keenly contested, with the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) being the most avid participant. RGS was the leading organisation of this time with numerous achievements to its name. American Robert Peary finally claimed first foot on North Pole in April 1909.

This must have hastened the race to South Pole. Antarctica had seen explorations from 1840s but reaching the South Pole remained a stiff target given the harsh climate, unknown geography and under-developed technology.. Two Englishmen - Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott were prime competitors undertaking three explorations between them from 1901 to 1913. But the first to reach the South Pole was the Norwegian Roald Amundson in 1911, who beat the second Scott expedition by a few days. And there hangs the tale.

Terra Nova

Cherry-Garrard had always been enamoured by the stories of his father's achievements in India and China where he had fought with merit for the British Defence Forces, and felt that he must live up to his father's example. But he had no business to be on an Antarctic expedition. He suffered from poor vision, and as per one account with many physical ailments and mental illnesses. In September 1907, Dr. Edward Adrian Wilson met with Robert Scott at Reginald Smith's home, to discuss another Antarctic expedition. Cherry-Garrard, who was Smith's young cousin, happened to visit at the time. Talk about being at the right place at the right time or vice versa. He volunteered to be a part of the expedition, which is quite extraordinary if you think. He would have been the youngest member, at 24, with no scientific training or past experience. He also decided to contribute £1,000 for the expedition. After first being turned down by Scott, he allowed his contribution to stand. This impressed Scott sufficiently, and along with persuasion from Wilson, he reversed his decision.

Reaching South Pole was the secondary objective of the Terra Nova expedition. It had various scientific and geographical research objectives, with Scott wishing to continue the work that he had begun when leading the Discovery Expedition in 1901–04. This was the reason that Scott had initially rejected Cherry-Garrard application as he had no scientific background. He eventually joined as an assistant zoologist, a claim which many members of the expedition party doubted.

Sixty-five men (including replacements) formed the shore and ship's parties of the Terra Nova Expedition. They were chosen from 8,000 applicants. Terra Nova sailed from Cardiff, Wales, on 15 June 1910. It left Port Chalmers, in New Zealand on 29 November 1910 and arrived off Ross Island on 4 January 1911. (Ross Island is named after Sir James Clark Ross, who in 1840s was amongst the earliest explorers of Antarctica). Once in Antarctica, many expeditions were taken up in small parties with specific exploration and research purposes. Importantly, winter in Antarctica sets in April for a period of six months. This is a period of complete darkness and extreme cold, forbidding any activity. Thus, explorations slows down and the team just stays put waiting for the summers to resume activities.

South Pole march

Scott left for South Pole on November 1, 1911. This was a distance of around 1300 kms from the base in Cape Evans to be carried out in parts and planning batches of men and resources (food, equipment, dogs, ponies). The journey involved traversing glaciers, crevasses and of course hostile weather. On 3 January 1912, at latitude 87°32' S, Scott made his decision on the composition of the polar party: Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Edgar Evans would go forward.

About 15 miles from their goal, the party spotted Amundsen's black flag and they knew that they had been forestalled. They reached the Pole on 17 January 1912 (two and a half months after starting). After confirming their position and planting their flag, Scott's party began the return journey.

The return journey proved perilous. They lost two men. Midway through the journey, Edgar Evans succumbed to injuries from falling and from frostbites. Oates’ hands and feet were rendered useless due to frostbite. He voluntarily leaves the tent and walks to his death. His last words were "I am just going outside and may be some time". (The key problem was that Scott’s party could not rendezvous with the teams which were supposed to meet them and get them back to base camp. At this point, things get murky with explanations on why the rendezvous failed. There are many accounts of what were Scott’s orders, and what transpired during the months of February and March 1912, that those orders could not be carried out. There are hints of poor planning, poor implementation and lack of cohesion among men.)

In a cruel joke of fate, Cherry-Garrard was at the One Ton Depot on 10 March 1912, 110 kms away from where Scott’s party was at the time. But he could not go further to search for them due to poor weather and considerations of available resources. When Scott’s group reached a point which was 11 miles (18 km) south of the One Ton Depot on 20 March 1912, they were halted by a fierce blizzard. Had they been able to cover that distance they might have been saved by resources left at One Ton Depot.

During the next nine days, as their supplies ran out, and with storms raging outside the tent, Scott and his companions wrote their farewell letters. Scott made a final entry on 29 March: "Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away... I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more. Last entry: For God's sake look after our people.” He also wrote his ‘Message to the Public’:

We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last ... Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale....

By end March, the group at Cape Evans headed by Edward Atkinson made an attempt to find and rescue Scott’s party but could not as the weather made further progress south impossible. Atkinson recorded, "In my own mind I was morally certain that the [polar] party had perished.” And then the winter of 1912 set in. In end October 1912, a party set out to search for Scott’s team and on 12 November 1912, they (Cherry-Garrard was part of the party) found the tent containing the frozen bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers. Atkinson read the relevant portions of Scott's diaries, and the nature of the disaster was revealed. The tent was collapsed over the bodies and a cairn of snow was erected. The party searched further south for Oates's body, but found only his sleeping bag. Before the final departure in January-February 1913, a large wooden cross was erected on the slopes of a hill, inscribed with the five names of the dead and a quotation from Tennyson's Ulysses.

Mid-script: When news of his death reached mainland, Scott became a national hero. But his reputation was dented some fifty to sixty years after his death, a time by which most members of the expedition had died. Researchers questioned his leadership and planning skills. He was thought to have bungled the expedition. Recent times have seen a reversal of these opinions and restoration of his status as a national icon, following a new wave of researchers. How fickle is posthumous glory!

I did not write this whole piece for what I have said so far, astounding and uplifting though it is. For Cherry-Garrard, the demise of Scott’s party was especially painful because he lost two men with whom he had undertaken another arduous journey. The best is yet to come:

The Winter Journey

In the winter of 1911, a team from Terra Nova took an extraordinary expedition into Antarctica. This expedition was conceived by Wilson who was the Chief of Scientific Staff. The scientific purpose was to secure eggs of Emperor penguin (a penguin species, amongst the largest) at an early embryo stage. This was to test the then proposed theory of recapitulation, which Wilson believed in. The theory hypothesised that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to hatching goes through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors. Birds were considered to have evolved from reptiles ( it is now an accepted scientific fact that birds evolved from dinosaurs). Wilson believed that Emperor penguins were the most primitive birds and that there embryos could show the evolution of birds from reptiles, primarily the formation of feathers. In his previous Antarctic expedition in 1901-1904, he had discovered the breeding cycle as well as the breeding ground of the penguins. Although they were able to bring home a number of deserted eggs and chicks, they were not able to procure early embryos.

Since the Emperor penguins live only in Antarctica, and they lay eggs in the dead of winter, this was the only time for the team which comprised Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard, to undertake the punishing 100 kilometres journey to Cape Crozier, the only breeding colony known at the time. The party set out on 27 June 1911. Travelling during the Antarctic winter had not been previously tried. As expected, it was a harrowing journey and a tale of immense bravery.

Interesting aside about Emperor penguins Emperor penguins have interesting reproduction routine. The female penguin lays one egg in May or early June. After laying, the mother's nutritional reserves are exhausted and she carefully transfers the egg to the male, before immediately returning to the sea for two months to feed. The transfer of the egg can be awkward and difficult, and many couples drop the egg in the process. When this happens, the chick inside is quickly lost, as the egg cannot withstand the freezing temperatures on the icy ground. The male spends the winter incubating the egg in his brood pouch, balancing it on the tops of his feet, for nine weeks until hatching. To survive the cold and winds, the males huddle together, taking turns to be in the middle of the huddle. Emperor penguin is the only species where this behaviour is observed - in all other penguin species both parents take shifts incubating. By the time the egg hatches, the male will have fasted for around 115 days since arriving at the colony - during this period of travel, courtship, and incubation, the male may lose as much as 20 kg. Newly hatched chicks are entirely dependent on their parents for food and warmth. If the chick hatches before the mother's return, the father feeds it a curd-like substance composed of protein and lipid, which is produced in his oesophagus. The female penguin returns at any time from mid-July to early August. She finds her mate among the hundreds of males by his vocal call and takes over the caring of the chick, feeding it by regurgitating the food that she has stored in her stomach. The male then leaves to feed at the sea, spending around 24 days before returning. If the incubating parent is not relieved by its partner before its own energy reserves are depleted, then it returns to the sea to re-feed, abandoning its egg or chick at the colony site. Abandoned chicks do not survive.

Cherry-Garrard has given detailed account of this 35 days journey in his book The Worst Journey in the World, published in 1922, and ranked amongst the greatest travel books. While I have not read the book yet, excerpts or fragments of it are spine chilling.

They encountered temperatures in the range of -40°C to −66°C, strong winds, blizzards, almost complete darkness, treacherous land and personal physical limitations. They had to man-haul their sledge the entire distance. The party had two sledges, but the poor surface of the ice meant that at times they could not drag both sledges. They were thus forced to relay, moving one sledge a certain distance before returning for the other, thus walking three miles for every one advanced.  This meant that at times they could only travel a couple of miles each day.

Gear, clothes, and sleeping bags were constantly iced up. Sweat froze inside their clothes, the breath iced balaclavas to their heads. Everything turned to stone. Each morning they had to pound one another's clothes and sledge harnesses for as long as an hour. Each evening it took three to four hours to make camp and dinner and get into their bags. Each morning it took three to four hours to start the stove, make breakfast, get their icelike boots on, and break camp.

Frostbites were common. Even within his thick fur mittens, Cherry-Garrard's frostbitten fingers developed blisters running their length. The blisters filled with fluid, and the fluid froze. Cherry-Garrard talks of pricking six or seven of the blisters and letting the liquid out, to great relief. Cherry-Garrard suffered from poor vision, seeing little without the spectacles that he could not wear while sledging. He fell constantly, sometimes tripping over ice, sometimes into crevasses. At one point Bowers falls into the bay. Wilson and Cherry-Garrard, not close enough to reach Bowers in time, watch their companion struggle to pull himself out. Bowers struggles in silence and they watch in silence. At one point, the blubber stove spit burning fat into Bowers' eye. He moaned all night.

After reaching Cape Crozier on 15 July, their tent was ripped away and carried off in a blizzard, leaving them in their sleeping bags under a thickening drift of snow, singing hymns to pass the time. Their survival during their return journey depended on the tent which they fortunately recovered half a mile away.

When they finally reached the penguin colony the little light was fading fast. They collected five eggs, and skinned three adults for blubber, which restored the exhausted supplies of food and fuel. Two eggs cracked en route. The three remaining eggs were intact but frozen solid. Back in the camp, Wilson thawed them out, cut little windows in each shell and pickled the embryos which were in an advanced stage of development.

After the expedition, Cherry-Garrard,  after struggle with the bureaucracy, got the three extracted embryos to the University of Cambridge where embryologist Richard Assheton sliced two of them into sections and mounted them on slides. But World War I and Assheton’s death delayed the complete examination on the embryos. The slides eventually made their way to anatomist Charles Parsons. He published his findings in 1934, 23 years after they had been collected in that absolute dark, frozen cold of the lonliest of places, and after two of three collectors had died, and after the recapitulation theory, on whose premise they had been collected, had largely been discredited. It was concluded that the specimens “have not contributed much to the understanding of the embryology of penguins.”

The shells, the single intact embryo and the series of microscope slides have survived for more than 100 years and travelled by sled, by ship, by train and by car a distance of thousands of kilometers to the Bird Group at the Natural History Museum.

What’s left to say?

What was the purpose of the Winter expedition? What were the individual motivations of these men? What are the extremities of endurance of human body and will? What is the measure of a life? What is the expanse and mystery of nature? I chose this story because every part of it staggered me. It poignantly juxtaposes futility with enormity - a lesson which the instant gratification world of today will find difficult to grasp. It talked about possibly different times and a different breed of men. Men who would volunteer for an arduous expedition out of spirit for adventure and daring overlooking own physical limitations; men who would venture into near death for advancement of science even the one they do not understand; men who would stand for something other than just the end result; men who would die for camaraderie; men who despite all the hardships have the sense of  balance to say: “Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin.”

Last line of The Worst Journey in the World: “If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.”

PS: Cherry-Garrard died on 18 May 1959. After the Terra Nova expedition, he commanded a squadron in Flanders during the first World War. He suffered from clinical depression and spent many years bedridden due to many afflictions. He largely spent a quiet life, deeply distraught due to the death of his friends, and revisiting the question of what possible alternative choices and actions might have saved the South Pole team.