With the sweltering summer becoming increasingly uncomfortable, I dearly wished that I could plunge with gay abandon into an icy cool pool and watch the world go by, but there was a catch to this aquatic pipe dream. You see, I couldn’t swim, not even in a municipal corporation pool. Then this eye catching newspaper advertisement came to my rescue.
‘Learn to swim like a fish in ONLY 14 days!’ it proclaimed cockily and tacked on to it was the line sketch of a pot bellied bloke warily eyeing a brimming pool and not quite believing that he was expected to dive in without a qualm and regale a sceptical world with a spectacular mermaid act. I took stock of the situation and I decided that it was about time that I learned to swim, if not like a fish, at least like a hybrid cross between an infant tadpole and an inferior marine amoeba.
I went to the address given in the advertisement. “I’ve come about your ad in today’s paper,” I told the front office receptionist, “you see, I want to learn to swim like a fish.”
“Yes sir,” she said smiling pleasantly, “you go and meet our instructor by the poolside.”
The instructor before whom I presented myself took a snide look at ray bull neck with great rolls of fat down it like the sand dunes in a desert, my bulging tummy which would have come in handy as a life preserver in an emergency — it made me naturally buoyant and my spindly legs and he appeared to be wondering if a specimen like me, could possibly exist. “Swimming will put you in great shape in next to no time, “he enthused, “go into that rest room over there and change into your swimming trunks!” I emerged from the rest room clad in baggy swimming trunks, ray bulging turn perched precariously on spindly legs and swaying to and fro unaccustomed to the exertion and I looked like a performing gamboled elephant.
My instructor coaxed and cajoled me to the edge of the pool and ordered, like a Persian drill sergeant, “In you go!” I gingerly stepped into the pool momentarily expecting to meet a watery grave and straightaway I plunked to the bottom like a drowning rubber duck. But let me say in extenuation of my pathetic maiden performance in the aqua -- I had proved Archimedes right by displacing exactly 3 cubic metres of water. The instructor retrieved me by the scruff of my neck and shook me like a mongrel to whom he had given a long delayed bath and dunked me into the water again.
“Go ahead and star swimming!” I desperately thrashed with my legs and flailing arms raising a lot of foam rather like a paddle steamer on Hoogly River, but remaining exactly where I was — clinging for my life to the diving board.
Anyway, after a Herculean effort, I managed to reach the other end of the pool without drowning myself. “Marvellous show!” said my instructor,” a few more laps like those and you’ll put Mark Spitz to shame!”
I have been regularly attending my swimming lessons for 15 days now and I can appreciate your eagerness to know if I have really learned to swim like a fish. Well, all I can say is that I have indeed learned to swim like a dead fish, its shimmering white tummy up and floating downstream.