Learning Swimming…… :-) or rambling? True Story Folks!

The scene is set in Bangalore…..circa 1984….8th standard (not grade!) summer holidays…..when we lived in ever-green Malleswaram with mango and jackfruit trees lining portions of 8th cross….and Sampige Road….which also had the Sampige trees ofcourse….I believe they’re called Jasmine trees in English…..not quite sure!


I used to be great friends with Ashwin, a lad from the neighbourhood….he was a couple of years senior to me in school…..one who was gifted with an almost supernatural ability when it came to sports and an equally moronic ability when it came to Math and Science….

We shared a mutualistic symbiotic relationship (Hey, I’m right about this terminology – I just googled this shit!) of sorts where I taught him how to count on his fingers and that fire does generate light and heat (while he burnt his fingers trying to light his first ciggy!) and he taught me the fundamental principles of hand-eye co-ordination by whacking me (repeatedly) with a tennis ball while I desperately tried to catch it…

Anyways…Lord Ashwin, one fine afternoon condescended to agree to my begging and pleading and decided to help me learn swimming! It was decided that we would begin the next day morning at 6:00 am….the very first batch for the day…..why 6:00 am…..even God doesn’t know why…..his rationale was that the water would be the cleanest then…..my justification that the Chlorine in the water would kill the germs etc,. and other scientific explanations fell on deaf ears….Lord Ashwin was steadfast in his stupidity and no mortal could change his line of thought!

My mom ofcourse was so happy that her putra ratna (diamond of a son!) was doing something other then vegetating in bed until noon….she set the alarm for an early 5:00 am and woke me up with a hot cup of steaming filter coffee….

Here, with your kind permission my dear Sirs, I must digress to a discussion on caffeine in the decoction - that is the “active ingredient” in coffee. I compare the olden day gravitationally derived drip decoction thingamajig to a naturally aspirated engine…..where as the present day’s coffee maker is a force-fed a.k.a. turbo-charged engine. Bottom line folks…..I hate turbo-lag and the waiting until 3000 r.p.m for it to kick in deal…..and therefore prefer the good old 2 compartment stainless steel decoction maker. Anyway, like I said - I’m digressing :-P

So after having been “suitably woken up” with this caffeine infested, sugary and milky concoction…off we went riding our bi-cycles at 5:30 am towards the Sadashivnagar swimming pool….via Sankey Road….which ofcourse encircles the Sankey Tank. Here is where people who cannot afford the Rs. 5 per hour batch to swim go and swim! The reason why the Sankey Tank was not on our “favorite places to swim” list was because most of the adults and kids alike from the neighbouring slum areas used it for “purposes” other than swimming if you get my drift!
Aaah….I just caught myself rambling again!


We reached the cycle stand at the swimming pool, paid the 25 paise ( yes….the same 25 paise coin that’s almost out of circulation now!) for the cycle stand wallah and headed to the ticket counter…where there were only 4 or 5 people ahead of us! And not the hundreds he had talked about… After a few choice kannada swear words that included Lord Ashwin’s ancestors and made his grandparents turn in their graves, we went into the pool complex.

We went up the steps and placed our sandals (chappals..to stick to the terminology here) and our plastic bags containing a towel and undies, on the steps. Stripped down to our undies ( Hey, swimming trunks came much later folks…..I wasn’t even sure if I would ever learn swimming so didn’t buy them!) and I meekly followed him towards the showers….

By now, I was getting shit scared….coz after the initial enthu had all but died down, it came down to the fact that I had to get into the water…..and push my head into the water and get my feet off the ground and start kicking…..no amount of earlier “theory” lessons from the Lord had instilled even a semblance of a plan or co-ordination in my head…..the co-ordinationally challenged one!

But first, we had to shower…..he came by and made me stand under the shower….went to the shower and opened the tap…..and out came COLD water gushing down……and I was screaming for my mom! The season may have been summer folks…..but THAT water on THAT morning might have as well been piped in from a refrigerator! The Lord stood at a safe distance and laughed his ass off while I was on a sensory overdrive! Talk about being AWAKE!

And when it was his turn to take a shower, he non-chalantly shrugged his shoulders and said that since it was that early…nobody was checking to see if everyone showered….so he wouldn’t do it…..the little Bastard!

The sun had not yet risen….and it was still reasonably dark….and Ashwin lead the way towards the pool…..He asked me to watch him jump in and then follow him….he said that the water there was 3.5 feet and since we were 4.5 feet or taller…..I would be OK….

He took a few steps back to prepare for a running start…and he took a big leap and SPLASH! Into the pool he went, head and everything…..2 seconds later, his head bobbed up and there he was…standing in around 4 feet of water… he asked me to follow suit…

I was way too scared and all…so I told him I would climb down the steps the first time…right then he started teasing me that I was a girl and that I couldn’t jump….’Lo naanu hudugiru illi jump madodu nodidino…..neenu yeno althiya?’ was his retort! It meant – Hey, I have seen girls jump into the water from here….why are you crying like one?’. If that didn’t spur me into action, I didn’t know what would…..so I took a deep breath and jumped in…..and kept going in…..deeper and deeper….no ground for my feet to stand up on….started kicking and all the air in my lungs escaped…..started drinking water…..must have drunk a bucket of water atleast…..when I felt a pair of hands drag me up towards the surface….it was Ashwin….

The son-of-an-electron-gun had jumped into the deep end of the pool and had quickly re-surfaced….and kept kicking his legs so it appeared as if he was standing…..The coach / lifeguard pulled me out of the water, made my lie on my belly and a couple of big squeezes in my stomach, had me spit out all the water I had drunk….he whacked Ashwin on his head and ordered him never to set foot in that pool again! my head was still reeling from all that had happened in a matter of less than a minute….it was too much to bear….so I lay down until I felt better…..then we picked up our cycles and rode an uneventful…silent journey back home…..

He promised to “really” teach me swimming and that he did it coz I swore at his family in the cycle stand….although I think this whole episode was what is called in ‘Law & Order’ terms as “Pre-meditated”.
I did not spill the beans on what happened to my mom….and decided to go with Ashwin again the next day. True to his word, he did teach me swimming….the initial floating….followed by “free style” aka the American crawl….

I got pretty good at it by the end of the summer of 84….and swam every single day…..had a growth spurt of about 2 or 3 inches to my height…so much that my pants had become ‘jataka sabi’ pants….a colloquial term for pants that ride above one’s ankles…..

Then came time to learn the back stroke…….but that’s a whole another ball game….and a whole another blog!

Hope you enjoyed my saga of learning swimming! Cheers.