The deep side of shallow

THERE are some people who have always known how to do everything. Ask humbly if they know how to drive, and you discover their license arrived the day their braces went. Place them before a piano, and an intricate melody will emerge with careless ease. Bring a swimming pool before them and they will transform into water snakes that pop out once in a while only to yell, "What a pity you cannot swim: the pool is so wonderful!"

This last I have never been able to take. I get migraine instantly if placed before a wheel, and find eleven extra fingers when confronted with black and ivory keys. But somewhere deep down, I have always fancied myself a mermaid.

Like most other people, I had a father, normally a rational and rather lovable man. But when it came to letting me learn to splash about, he resolutely shook his head. So it was that, at 32 with two swim suits wistfully stuffed far into my cupboard, the only bit of me that had ever touched a pool was my ankles.

Next to where I work, there is a pool. The tiny office where application forms for "coaching" were being given out was Liliput land. At 5 feet 2 inches, I was approximately 2 feet 6 inches taller than the other aspirants. They regarded me with amused curiosity. The intensity of their amusement seemed to increase in the changing room. I had never hated pretty young things more. The bright yellow swimsuits with tiny ballerina skirts, that I had scoffed at in the shops as absurd, actually looked pert and dainty on them. I gratefully found a few others closer to my size and, ignoring each other neck down, we gathered in middle-aged solidarity.

To one who has never been in a pool, a 25- metre stretch of water induces a curious reaction in the stomach. The sight of people noisily spitting into the said water complicates this feeling further, as does the memory of many friends who have assured you that everyone, but everyone, pees in the pool, especially if they are just learning to swim. Ignoring the desperate signals your body is blipping out, you gingerly step in and, as instructed, put your head down in the water and try to "breathe out through the mouth", "breathe in through the nose" (when your head is out of the water). Over the first 15 minutes, I felt I would never be thirsty again.

Meanwhile, I am clutching the side of the pool, as if a heroine in a cliffhanger. The North Stars of the coach clump in at eye level, menacingly close to my hapless fingers. "Let go of the wall," he says mildly.

This keeps me occupied for the next three days. To let go of a wall, with three feet of water under you, even if you are five feet tall, is a conceptual problem for one who cannot float. Everywhere around me, people are attempting to let go of the wall; soon all of them manage it. But I am still touching the wall: only just, but even the contact of a fingertip is reassurance for the blind.

Three days pass, and sheer humiliation finally compels me to let go of the wall and, well, I find I can float! After this it is only a matter of: "Body straight!", "Back relaxed!", "Stomach in!", "Shoulders straight!", "Head down!".Weeks pass; the two- footers, like water sprites, are now tinier still since they are far away at the deep end, splashing joyously. I have managed to make it half way across the breadth of the pool. Coach after coach takes on the challenge of teaching me and retreats defeated.

Meanwhile, as the longest staying student in the pool I have become a happily greeted regular, a privileged insider. I can even do a bit of coaching myself, being superbly analytical about the failings of other learners. I have begun to enjoy the blueness of the water, the quiet inside it, and then, unawares, the feel of slicing through it and arriving at the other side with breath enough to sing a song.

One day, I overhear one of the new entrants, pointing to me longingly, and telling his friend as they clutch the side: "She manages pretty well!"

ANURADHA ROY

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