Taking selfies is quite an art especially when you have to take a selfie on an old fashioned phone with a uni-direction camera. Try aiming the camera at your reflection in a mirror with spectacles and posing “effortlessly” – WOW you must be a genius
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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.
Swimming Pool (Photo credit: Wikipedi 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!
Related articles
Water Aerobics – How To Lose Weight And Tone Your Body In The Water(fitnessforhealthproducts.com)
The Benefits of Aqua Aerobics(childlifemommy.com)
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Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
~ The Lord’s Prayer
Most people in the world whether believers in religion or not are familiar with this line from the Lord’s Prayer.
In the archaic literary sense, the meaning of the word trespass is sin or offence.
I must have said this prayer, rather mumbled it, through countless school assemblies like many Indian children who have studied in what is loosely termed a “convent school”. Convent schools were started by Missionary orders especially of nuns whose aim was to teach and educate young, native minds. Apart from mere scholastics, they imparted a value based education and equipped many a young person with skills that stood them in good stead all through their lives. While I didn’t attend a convent school, I studied in a similar system – the Anglo Indian School which was largely meant for the Anglo Indian population . We began each day with the compulsory recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, a tradition embraced whole heartedly by Christians and non-Christians alike.
But this post is not about prayer or even schools, it is about forgiving and forgetting.
Many of you must have heard the story of two Buddist monks who came upon a river bank during the course of their journey. While they were deciding how to get to the other side, a pretty, young woman came up to them and asked them to help her get across too. The monks agreed and the three of them crossed the river and made their way on their respective paths. A few hours later, the younger of the monks asked the older monk if he found carrying the young girl a heavy task. The old monk replied that he had carried the girl and forgotten about it while the young man was still carrying the girl in his mind all this while!
This simple story reaffirms the burden of carrying a slight, an offence or guilt. As the days, months and even years go by, it gets harder to forgive so one should forgive instantly and carry on.
But, while I am not quick to take offence, I definitely am no saint and even if I understand the logic and sense in forgiving, I find it hard to execute. And from my observations, the closer one is to a person, the harder it is to forgive. Even though the Gita advises us to be unattached and work without expectation, it is a human failing to expect an effect for every action. Even though one may not consciously expect anything (not even gratitude) when nothing comes by way of reward there is disappointment.
Being brought up on the principle that one should forgive and forget, I find that I may be able to forgive but it is extremely hard for me to forget.
Can you forgive and forget?
Forgiveness is one of the first lessons of childhood. Playing around with others is bound to cause some kind of hurt either physical of mental and the very first time one encounters such an episode, it comes as a shock to one’s fragile ego. We are then urged to say sorry and forget things. To make it easier, there is generally an intercessor in the form of a mother, caretaker or friend who eases the pain and embarrassment. Very often this kiss and make up routine was done most reluctantly just to put an end to the acrimony and name shouting. But did we really feel sorry for what we had done?A familiar school girl refrain used to be “Sorry doesn’t make a dead man alive” which is unfortunately true. No matter how deep the regret and penitence, a wrong action can never be righted by a mere sorry. So why then is it so difficult to understand that genuine forgiveness is really quite difficult?
Twenty- five Seven 