It was like drowning during a drought. Every passing minute of every night felt like an ordeal with whatever was keeping her from not spiralling into a paper ball and being tossed over into a random bin; one at a school classroom where young love would twinkle faintly at the tips of two- or more- overly sharpened pencils, before the teacher came in and hushed the drooping children back to their queasy benches. She needed to learn to swim, and quickly, before the pools of ink that were caged in her mouth would either be bitterly swallowed or callously gorged onto her thin sheets that hardly kept her warm during monsoon nights. Brushing frantically and flossing every day without fail hardly helped. Perhaps, she needed lessons.
Perhaps, she could kiss, and within that kiss, she could unsuspectingly bury her breaths of exasperation for the time being. Or, she could chew gum, and stick all of the jitters that shot up from her thigh to her teeth on it, and try to spit it out every time she was required to speak. She could even drink water, and swallow the ink forming in her mouth like an undiscovered writer in her mid-50s, turning the colour of a midnight sky. She could barf, yes. She could just hit her chest like a gorilla and force the dryness out of her like shampoo in an almost empty bottle, that erupts in spurs from the untimely squeezes of the wrinkled fingers of a cold, naked body.
“just get into the water, it’ll come to you,” she thought, from memory of being told the same over and over.
The water was warm and felt light against her limbs. So light that it almost felt like air. She just had to swim in air, she thought. She had buckets of ink filling up through her chest to her neck and nose as though she eternally is audience to something gross.
Bend into a half fold,
Pick the right leg up,
And then the left,
Shuffle,
Wave your arms,
Time your movements,
Flow with the momentum.
She followed the lesson as though it were a computer program instruction. It was funny, how instructions worked, for they seem like they want her to perform her own version of them but, really, if she did put in even an ounce of herself into it, the referee would blow a whistle and show her the offense card. Freedom, as was written on the little posters around the walls of the pool, was that everyone follow their own tracks. They could splash extra, make egotistical and flamboyant spins in between, mimic dolphins and wail in ecstacy as they “expressed themselves”- whatever they pleased- but within the confines of their own track. Something that was not written on these posters, that she observed as she tried to paddle, was how for the others in her swimming class, freedom was being able to ignore instructions or doing well despite them. Some would get the yellow card, but the referee would wink as he gave it to them and she would feel her eyes roll eternally like sand dunes before a storm. She was probably imagining it. What kind of refree winks while showing a card?
She paddled and paddled until her feet resembled withered sponges, that still could be used to scrub utensils “until they tore off into pieces in one’s soap-y hands.” All this workout made her core feel numb, and at one point, breath itself took a break. To be a fish in the sea, one had to resort to alternate means of breathing. That is all it took to change form- alter your breathing. To survive, one must breathe. And to live, one must breathe different. She wonders if the water in the pool ever takes pity on her. She wonders if it resents having a fluid form that slides right off its occupants, or binds them so well that they have to stay in. The water is no wise, nor does it actually care enough to cherish the memory it keeps, she thinks. Water excuses no being that does not want to learn to swim. It does not even let her hold it within her for a while. Even in its forgiveness, water is brutal.
Stroke, a breath of fresh air, stroke.
The referee’s whistle blew off, as though he wishes to inform her that rice was ready to be served, and only she has to do it. Until then, whatever made her loathe being in the pool became a hundred fold worse the moment her limbs were exposed to the air outside. She thought, after spending hours on, learning to swim, air was supposed to be liberating. But the water demands so much attention. The force of the pull was exuberant on her lungs, and she gasped several times before she could stand up straight at the edge of it. Her clothes clung to her body exposing every little crease and bulge, and she instantly felt the urge to cover herself up. Her shoulders swooped down low, exposing her collarbones to the gratifying air. Droplets still heavy on her eyelids, she began strutting until her feet got used to the walking. It was as though, they had already forgotten to swim. She would dry up and the air would provide for her.
And onwards she went, to wherever her home was, without bothering to change, without wondering once if she would ever be back. She was sure she learnt one lesson that day.
Tanmayi J. 