Thirty-five-year-old Aastha Katyal no longer wakes up with anxiety about traffic snarls or arduous production meetings. Instead, her mornings begin with a quiet stroll, observing birds and butterflies, the curve of a wing or the texture of a leaf, forms that find their way into the clay she shapes at her pottery wheel.For over a decade, Katyal lived in Mumbai, working as a creative producer for leading television channels and web series. Until 2024, her life followed a punishing rhythm: wake up, rush to work, rush through the day, return late, watch television, fall asleep. “The last few years were particularly difficult,” she says, “I wasn’t at peace in my marriage. No matter how much I tried, something felt amiss.” At the same time, an old cyst (she was diagnosed with neurocysticercosis in 2015) triggered seizures in 2020-21.It was her mother who suggested pottery. Katyal enrolled in a neighbourhood class. “It was the first time I felt what I created was mine, only mine.” Soon she bought her own wheel. By 2023, her divorce was finalised; a year later, she quit her job and moved back to her parents’ house in Gurugram.A three-month residency in Andretta, the artists’ colony in Himachal Pradesh’s Kangra Valley in 2024, marked a turning point. “In Mumbai, everything was rushed. In Andretta, we had schedules but there was no sense of panic,” says Katyal.Back home, she set up a terrace studio and began selling her work under the label Mitti & Mind. Her days now have deliberate pauses. “I now wake up at ease, have slow mornings, go for a walk, have breakfast with my family and mentally plan my day before I step into my studio,” she says, adding that while she is still on anxiety medication, she thankfully hasn’t gotten a seizure since.Katyal is not the only one hitting the reset button. In western India, 34-year-old Kunal Jhawar made a different recalibration. Raised in Indore, he secured a stable job at a leading IT firm after his engineering and moved to Mumbai. But by 2019, the city’s velocity began to weigh on him.“The city was superfast,” he says. Even watching a film or attending a play required “mental calculation factoring in hours of traffic”. The exhaustion was as much psychological as physical. He relocated to Pune that year, a decision that “gave me two extra hours every day”. The nature of his job hasn’t changed. But the pace of life has. Those two reclaimed hours have allowed him to stretch creatively. “Now I’m writing songs and stories for web series alongside poetry,” he says.Story continues below this adMumbai is considered a mecca for artists, including writers. When asked if Pune meant fewer opportunities, Jhawar credits lockdown-led digital boom for bringing opportunities. “I moved to Pune towards the end of 2019-20, saw a boom in the way content was consumed. If you are good, people will reach out. I conduct e-meetings and I am happy to travel to Mumbai when needed.”Katyal and Jhawar aren’t anomalies. They are part of a growing cohort choosing to move back with parents, relocate to smaller cities, seek permanent remote work, scale down businesses or restructure ambition. At the heart of these decisions lies a desire to not let the noise of the world quieten dreams.The internet has given this impulse a name: “slow living”. Lifestyle forecasters have called it one of the defining cultural shifts of the coming years. Adjacent ideas such as quiet quitting, digital detoxes and minimalism echo its ethos: a conscious recalibration away from speed, excess and constant optimisation.The idea itself is not new. In the late 1980s, Italy’s Slow Food movement emerged as a protest against fast food and cultural homogenisation, advocating local traditions and mindful consumption. After the 2008 financial crisis, minimalism gained global traction, urging people to declutter not just homes but aspirations shaped by overconsumption. The pandemic intensified this reckoning. Lockdowns forced stillness. By 2022, the term “quiet quitting” entered mainstream discourse, less about resigning and more about disengaging from the expectation of constant overperformance. What distinguishes this moment is scale and self-awareness.Story continues below this ad Chef Naimita JogasiaFor Naimita Jogasia, it was to scale-down her baking business and expand into verticals that bring her joy without draining her physically and mentally. As someone who loved baking, she started a small venture, An Ode to Gaia, from her family’s garage in Chembur in 2018. By 2023, she was operating from a 2,400 sq ft kitchen with a team of 35, catering to theatres, cafes and weddings. Orders ran into hundreds each month; bespoke cakes cost up to Rs 30,000.But success came at a cost. “I stopped recognising the person I had become,” she says. The irony was sharp: a business born from her desire of having healthy and gluten free dessert options left her ordering food from outside, skipping workouts, battling PCOS flare-ups, weight gain and hair fall. Investor conversations introduced further strain. “Their vision didn’t align with mine. I wanted to pay vendors and staff fairly. Getting an investor on board felt like losing control.”In early 2024, she wrapped up the larger operation. Today, she takes 20-30 orders a month from the same garage. She has expanded into structured teaching modules, consulting, pop-ups and content creation. “I’m ambitious about how I feel, how happy I am,” she says, “Not just about how much I make. Earlier I would dream of recipes and wake up anxious. Now I sleep peacefully.”Slow living looks different for different people. For some, like Mumbai-based Shraddha Neeraj Naik, it is simply sparing 10 minutes doing nothing. For the 41-year-old life coach, client calls blended into networking meetings and algorithm anxieties. “Even when I lay down to sleep, I was thinking about engagement strategies,” she says. Last August, she read about a competition in South Korea where participants were challenged to do nothing. Inspired, she began small — two minutes of deliberate stillness. “It’s harder than it sounds,” she says. Now she can manage 10 minutes: watching a sunset, taking a stroll or simply staring at the ceiling fan. “Sometimes all you need is to pause,” she says.Story continues below this adBarely a month ago, playback singer Arijit Singh announced he would step away from playback singing, then there is chef Prateek Sadhu. One of the leading culinary voices in India, he moved from Mumbai to Himachal Pradesh to start NAAR, celebrating Himalayan people, produce and stories. “If slow in your definition means pace, I am definitely not leading a slow life. I am much busier than when I was in Mumbai. Do I have time in the morning? I have, and a lot. I wake up to mountains, birds chirping and, most importantly, to a blue sky. Sometimes I also workout,” he says.Unlike many who move to mountains to disconnect, Sadhu saw it as reconnecting. “For me, stepping away wasn’t about switching off from work. It was about stepping away from noise and the constant pressure to be visible, validated and available. In Mumbai, you get swayed by recognition. Here, I’m grounded,” he says.The phenomenon of slow living, however, sits at an uneasy intersection of yearning for calmness and privilege.Steffi Elsy Xavier, who spent over a decade in wildlife conservation across cities, including Delhi and Bengaluru, felt burnout creep in. “The problem with 9 to 5 jobs is that they are never 9 to 5. I always grew up around greenery and suddenly I had no time to do gardening,” she says, adding, “I have always been a happy-go-lucky person. But one day, I struggled to get up from bed.” The pandemic became a breaking point. She quit, travelled briefly and moved to Kuilapalayam, a village near Auroville in Tamil Nadu.Story continues below this adHer life is visibly simpler. “I live a peaceful life that allows me to tend to my garden and look at the ocean from my window,” she says. But it was only possible with a lifestyle turnaround. “Now I live in a one room-kitchen with minimal furniture and utensils.” Chef Prateek SadhuBeing privileged helps, she admits. “I became an accidental model and did some work for brands like Raw Mango and others. I paint and create digital artwork. Because I live in a small town, my expenses are lower; tea and snacks cost Rs 85, rent is Rs 10,000. I make enough to manage financially but also, I am privileged.”Katyal too affirms that leaving a job did come with some uncertainty. “It definitely feels like a challenge on some days,” she says, adding that there are days when I worry if I will have enough work the following month. “I was at a crafts fair recently, so I knew I would make decent sales. But there’s now way to tell what the next month would look like.” When she decided to pursue pottery full-time, seniors in the profession were blunt: Don’t expect financial rewards.Forget foreign vacations. Stability will be elusive. “They weren’t wrong. If I was making Rs 100 a month earlier, I’m making Rs 100 a year now.” But her mother keeps her anchored, reminding her to be patient, to trust the process.Story continues below this adMoving back with her parents too has brought its own adjustments. She is more accountable now. “Earlier, I could wake up and make a last-minute plan, even late at night. Now everything is more structured. My mother is protective, she wants to know who I’m meeting, whether I’ll be home for meals. And if I’m out, one eye is always on the clock.”ALSO READ | Masterchef judges Vikas Khanna, Ranveer Brar and Kunal Kapur on India’s moment at the global culinary tableFor Xavier, quitting the job was the easiest part because the quality of life is much better. “I do have the fear of missing out sometimes but it is largely only when I am on Instagram. But otherwise, there’s so much to do — read, paint and other chores. When I miss the city life, I go to Bengaluru to meet my parents and catch up with friends for a few days,” she says.But she does question the commodification of slowness. “Everything becomes a trend. There are ‘guides to slow living’ now. That’s hyper-capitalism. People have moved to parts of Goa and say they live in villages but there’s artisanal coffee and music till 4 am.”Her critique underscores a paradox: even resistance can be monetised. According to a report by HTF Market Intelligence, the global ‘Slow Living 2.0’ market was valued at $16.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $58.6 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 16.8 percent between 2024 and 2032. What began as philosophy now spans retail, travel, wellness and home design.Story continues below this adThe absurdity of this moment may be this: in trying to escape the race, we risk entering another one — this time for curated calm.Yet, beneath the aesthetics and market projections lies something that’s resonating with people, a collective questioning of what success should feel like. For Katyal, the answer is simple. It is clay being moulded under steady hands. It is a morning without dread. It is knowing when to apply pressure and when not to. And in that awareness, perhaps, lies the real art of slowing down.