Chewing The Cud - Am I Sure ??

After having preached for hours to vicks about so many cliched things (which i labored in one of my earlier posts), i started to think about it on the way back to bangalore and at work. Now, that train of thought was quite depressing to say the least.

I asked viks to continue his swimming class. chap had been pretty decent at that for a while and was doing all sort of strokes like butterfly stroke, breast stroke, sun stroke etc inside the pool. (sun stroke ?? yeah whatever). The instructor had come home and went ga-ga over how he had taken to water like a fish and stuff like that. No clue if that was what he told every student who is due to renew his membership, but he did. I spent some time with viks talking to him about how important it is to learn swimming as an activity, an exercise and a hobby. And that awakened something inside and i rememberd something i tried so hard to forget, my very own swimming lessons.

Dongs and Pradeep took me to the YMCA pool in nandanam when i was in 5th standard or some such thing. The same stories i spun with vicks, they had spun it with me. Now, these two monsters knew all sort of swimming styles right from the much-popular surface swimming down to the dangerous (for everyone around) deep-pool swimming. I, being a self-learned sinker, had a tough time keeping up with their antics. Folks, we are talking about the mid-nineties here. So that means dongs and pradeep were all young in the late twenties wanting to prove something to younger, equal-aged and older women alike (women of any other category were out of bounds). The schedule of the day was very simple. Once we took our shower and walked in, these guys would make sure that all the floatees (rubber tubes) are safely hidden from eyesight. While i was looking at all this in suspicion, came the real thing. The grand idea that they hatched was to throw me into the pool in some deep area where i could not possibly stand and encourage me to swim. Somehow they forgot to remember that this thing of "do-it-yourself" works only in women empowerment movies. Real life though, is slightly original.

Co-swimmers were non-plussed at the splashing object right in the center of the pool screaming expletives. The swimming pool care-taker was wondering how someone can make so much noise gurgling water. Eventually, It turns out that everyone there was really surprised at the vocabulary i had. Now, dont let your imagination run wild. I started shouting stuff like "dei, neenga ellam annan thambiyoda porakalaya .. yenda enna mattum ipdi paduthreenga" (roughly translates to "you would know what i am going through if you had a brother") which was profanity for a 10 year old to shout at his uncle. Reading it in english, it probably sounds senti now, but the thamizh equivalent is, err, slightly obnoxious considering how old i was then. From that day on, whenever we came into the pool almost everyone was pointing to dongs and pradeep as "keepers of *that* kid" which didnt add much to their plan of impressing all the womenfolk and it sunk faster than i could ever do in a pool. and along with that went one of my now-favorite career options. scuba diving. anycase once i learn to swim the way humans are usually taught, there is only one stop: great barrier reef.

Now, this bit about "am i sure" isnt over yet. viks has started this serious debate within me so much that i am wondering if i am capable of advising __anyone__ on __any__ matter. Damn, a philosophical tug-of-war with my conscience was the last darned thing i was hoping for. One good thing is that i have got enough material for few more blogs. sigh.

My Conscience: lateral thinking, idhukku oru korachalum illa .. (translates to "lateral thinking, my foot ..")