Mumbai is getting hot and I decided it was a good time to take up the Club’s offer on Aqua Aerobic Classes, the best and fastest way to lose weight. According to my friend Kay who is definitely looking trimmer, the water acts as a good support while providing the body with adequate resistance to build muscle tone without causing any ligament tear or muscle fatigue.
I went around to the poolside where I saw a few bored parents sipping on coconut water while their kids were swimming in the pool under the watchful eye of the coach who was busy timing them with a stop watch. The kids themselves were happy with their protective eye gear, flippers, fancy swimming costumes and HDPE floats. Seeing them I was reminded of my own swimming lessons all those years ago.
I’ve never been comfortable around water and remember those dreaded river crossings in the interior parts of India, on bridges that boldly displayed signs proclaiming “Weak Bridge – Do not load beyond X Kg”. My heart literally used to be in my mouth especially when we would were behind a teetering lorry and I would only relax when we were about 4 feet away from the other bank, foolishly imagining that if the bridge collapsed at that stage, I’d be able to make it to safety! Since we travelled a lot on such scary bridges,my parents thought that learning swimming was not only a form of exercise but a life saving skill and one summer holiday, my mother took it upon herself to teach her two children how to swim. Since she didn’t know swimming herself, we needed a coach to teach us.
In those days my family lived in Pune and the only decent swimming class we knew of was one which was actually a tank or a well where you were pushed in by the coach. Of course there was an empty Dalda tin tied up on your back which was supposed to help you float, but the thought of being pushed down a ten foot drop with only a Dalda tin as a makeshift safety device didn’t sound very encouraging for me who was already scared of water…After much pleading my mother decided to look for a more student friendly mode of learning swimming. She was talking to a bank clerk one day in the bank and accidentally found out that he was an expert swimmer and he offered to teach us swimming in twenty days. All that we had to do was show up at the pool where he swam daily and he assured my mother that he’d make champion swimmers out my brother and me.
The first day we landed up at the pool I was horrified to see our teacher in a loin cloth! And the other girls in the pool were swimming in their skirts and blouses, their long tresses floating in the water! As for the water, it was a murky dark green! I nearly gagged and told my mother I’d rather drown than learn to swim in such a class. But my mother refused and promptly offered to buy the master a pair of swimming trunks but firmly put her foot down regarding my swimming with a skirt and blouse on top of my swimming costume.
So every morning, at the crack of dawn, we’d get into the pool tentatively walking down the ladder and clutching onto the sides for dear life. No sooner were we immersed that the coach would throw down some Dalda tins which we had to use as floats, holding them with arms outstretched while we paddled our legs in. After the initial shock we thought things would get better but actually they became worse because the swimming pool was really more a frog pond than a swimming pool with tadpoles swimming into your mouth as you released your breath in the water and bits of weed that tickled your toes as you treaded the water. In a way, I was grateful for this disgustingly dirty pool because my sole aim in getting in was swimming fast enough to get out moreso when I knew that the moment I could swim ten continuous lengths, I would be pronounced a master swimmer.
So I learnt to swim even faster than the promised twenty days and I also learnt how to swim super fast!
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