First Steps

I know nothing of swimming and though I am six feet tall, I will probably drown in four feet water too. I am not aquaphobic as such but somehow I always kept away from swimming may be it was because of overtly protective mom who fears after learning swimming my arrogance could get me in danger. So away from mom's nest, I have gone ahead with swimming, got enrolled in an expensive club, got required gears ready and all filled with enthusiasm.

After alienating the inhibitions, I started day one with my coach Kushal, he better be really "Kushal" in teaching swimming and saving people in pool otherwise India could risk an Olympics Medal. Anyways with all the burden of my heavy body and expectations I entered the pool and straight away Kushal stopped me to tell me, "This is not the way you enter the pool, you should enter like this." I looked at him and told myself, "Ooh, here it starts."

Learning new things is fun, I feel like going back to school. When you say school, it's about making new friends, learning new tricks and the victory dance. :P

My first assignment was to get at ease with pool. That was easy just having the walk in chest-dip water, I am no dumb-ass to screw that up. After that Kushal told me its time to learn a trick. He said we are very much used to breath in through nose and breath out via mouth, but swimming is different. You have to breath in through mouth in the open air and under water breath out via the nose. I told myself, "What crap, how is that possible under water?"

For first few attempts I could not get any air out from anywhere. I told him, "नहीं हो रहा है." He said, "अबे जोर लगा." जोर लगा?? What the F? I thought "कहा से जोर लगा और कहा पे जोर लागाना है." Still reluctantly I thought of giving another shot and I thought it would be like blowing your nose. So I took a deep breath and holding the bar, went beneath the water surface and tried blowing nose, surprisingly it worked. I could hear and see the bubbles around. I immediately came out of water and raised my hand up exclaiming, "Me..Me..Me, I got that." For those of all who have not done this, have you done blowing air in a drink using the straw? How much fun was that? Well breathing out in water through nose felt like that only; difference being now you are at the other end of the straw. :)

After passing out lot of air inside water, next lesson was to learn peddling, I did it for few minutes and it was time, class over for day one. It was good fun for first day. I hope I would continue it over a month and learn basic swimming at least.