my swimming

I love swimming. When I said this in front of one of my philosophical friends, he said “Yes. All of us are required to swim through this sea of life (Samsaara saagara) whether you love it or not”. Let me clarify. I mean swimming in a pool of water. I should phrase my first sentence as “I love trying to swim.” I can only swim free style. That is, a style, each individual is free to achieve on his own. My free style involves beating the hands and legs frantically to remain afloat and using the will power to propel me forward. An onlooker may feel that I am trying to drown myself but not achieving any success in the attempt. I enter the pool, take a deep breath and let go the hold on the pool side. After thrashing around for what seems to be an eternity, I manage to locate and get a hold on to the side of the pool again to regain my breath. When I can open my nose and eyes, I find myself a few feet away from where I began. Then I haul myself up and sit by the side observing others. I look with wonder at the old man ( I mean older than me) who is floating on his back serenely, with out any movement whatsoever, eyes closed and only his face and paunch out of water. And at the small girl doing butterfly or backstroke with so much grace that there is not a ripple of water around. She seems to be moving effortlessly with the help of some heavenly force. When I am swimming, half of the pool looks like a sea under the influence of tsunami.

When I was young, Bangalore boasted of one swimming pool, the corporation swimming pool behind the office of the Bangalore City Corporation. This swimming pool was called the ‘bath tub’ of all those who did not have a bathroom of their own, and we never went there. I think that we were not daring, dynamic or sportive enough to go there, fight our way through to the water and learn swimming. So we called it a ‘dirty bath tub’ and stayed home. The result is, I never learnt to swim when I should have.

By the time I finished my BDS, few more swimming pools had come up in Bangalore. They charged an entry fee, they were clean and the crowd was less. A learner could beat his hands and legs without getting entangled with hundreds of other limbs. So, my self, my brother and our good friend, Datta, started to learn swimming together. We chose the winter to start our training, as the pool used to be almost empty in the 6am-7am session, and we had enough space to thrash around. The other advantage was, there was no embarrassment of having to face little boys who carelessly dived from the top of the diving platform, surfaced calmly next to us and offered useful hints such as “uncle, put your head in water” or “uncle keep your leg straight”. The early morning cold was a deterrent to take the plunge, but once we got in it was OK. We learnt the basics of swimming by the time winter ended and the pool began to get crowded. Then more important things like finding a job or starting a practice occupied my mind, Datta started on his Phd, and my brother went away to do his Msc. That was the end of swimming in Bangalore.

When I joined the Goa health services at Canacona, I got my chance for practicing swimming again. Palolem, five kilometers from Canacona is considered to be the best beach for swimming. It has a curved beach stretch of about one and a half kilometers ending in hillocks on both ends. The waves are not strong and even if you go deeper into the sea avoiding breaking of waves, the water remains at chest height. It is flat like a tennis court and there is no chance of getting into sudden depressions and loosing your footing. The water was crystal clear. Here, I learnt to put my head into water and keep the eyes open enjoying the sight of the sandy floor, full of colourful shells. The experience of getting carried up by a gentle wave and coming down is wonderful. I had a group of friends who also preferred to spend free time during holidays in water rather then sitting in a dingy cinema hall at Margao. Two of them lived in a big house, barely 100 mts from the beach. There are days when we have spent whole days in water coming out for an hour or two for lunch. Once or twice my friends did get carried away, figuratively and literally, and were about to get drowned, but the local fishermen managed to bring them back. The best of my swimming ‘career’ was at Canacona. Thanks to the ‘development’ and growth of ‘tourism industry’ the Palolem beach is not worth a visit today.

While mentioning my friends in Palolem, I have to describe the house in which they stayed in. It was a big house on a huge plot of land with plenty of trees all around. They had got it for a ridiculously low rent. The local people said the house was haunted. My friends lived there happily with thousands of cockroaches, hundreds of rats, dozens of lizards - of the same size as rats- and may be a few snakes. They insisted that the snakes were only visitors - like me - and were not residents, and that they stayed over once in a way when they were too full of rats. The snakes never bothered us. Cockroaches did. There is no house with out cockroaches. They move around usually at night, search for food and once a light is switched on, scurry back to their hideouts. The Palolem cockroaches were daring. Their army came out at night to feed up on your hair and even if you got up and switched on the light, they stayed put on your pillow, waving their antennae as if inviting you for a fight. After the first experience, I always covered my head with a cap, when ever I slept there.

It is more than twenty years since I came to Ponda and I miss the swimming. Occasionally we went to the beach but I was fully occupied with the children. That is a different type of pleasure but I could not swim. Whenever I went a little deeper into the water the children followed. They never remained where I asked them to be. So, I gave up.

The MLA of Ponda, took the initiative to build a swimming pool here, when he was the minister for PWD. The construction ended with his term as the minister. With him back in power, after years, the work on the pool had started again. One of his aids who visited my clinic last week confirmed the news and said that the pool is about to be declared ‘open’. Being an interested party, I went to the site this morning to confirm the news and it appears to be true. I intend to continue with my version of swimming which involves good use of my limbs. I checked my limbs, felt my legs are in reasonably good condition and tried to work up on my hands. I have sprained one of them. I hope my limbs do not ditch me now and turn me into a “halliddaga kaDale illa, kaDale iddaaga hallilla” case. (When you had teeth there were no nuts and when you have the nuts there are no teeth)