..swimming lessons :)

We live in our papa’s ancestral ‘tharavadu’ and we have our own natural pond, kulam, in the backyard..! During the summers the water dries up to the very bottom, right till you can spot the uruva – the source of the water and during monsoon it fills up with amazingly blue water :) .

(anyone is welcome to check out my kulam, drop into my house during monsoon :) )

view from near motorshed.. :)

Front view.. :)

I would hav got a more clearer focused pic, but i saw a snake, so thought better of it..!!

Papa taught us (me and my brother) swimming. I was in LKG when I learned to swim. In the beginning I was out in a tube, with floaters on each hand, and a sari tied up to my middle, with papa holding the other end. He would then move up to the wall’s of the pond, and ask me to swim a small distance between the walls of the pond. Then, I was made to swim the length of the pond. Then I did it without the tube, then without floaters, and finally without the sari. J

I even used to have proper swimsuit back then. I used to adore it, and wore it on every possible time. I don’t remember what happened to it..! (I probably grew out of it, but probably didn't stop wearing it, so I think amma would have done something sinister to that, to stop me from wearing it..!)

I've always loved swimming underwater as opposed to normal swimming. And, what I loved more than swimming was jumping into the water from all sorts of heights, the walls surrounding, the trees on the edge, from above the motor shed, all kinds of places. I was never allowed to be in the pond on my own till I was in my 7^th or so (I really can’t blame my parents for that, children end up dead in ponds!!). My brother always had to be with me. And back when we were kids, that was not really a problem because both of us loved water!! We played games like hiding coins in the water and seeking it(God only knows how many coins we lost!), who can hold the breath the longest underwater, who can dive the longest distance, who can float the longest distance without moving a limb, and finally, who can stand upside down, under water most perfectly.

 He was the one who taught me jumping, basically I would climb up the wall and look down water, get scared, climb down again, gather my courage, get up again, and the cycle followed for almost 2 days. And I used to be sad because, brother had perfected the jump by then and he looked like he loved it. I begged my brother to teach me, so he came up with me on the wall, asked me to take a deep breath and he pushed me into water without warning. I have never stopped jumping into water after that!! :D

No matter how much we fought, we used to be together when asking our parents for swimming permission. Once we were in the pond, we’ll stay there hours long, till finally, amma comes and pulls us out of the water. We stayed in such a long time that when we got out, our eyes were red, and when we looked on to a lighted bulb, we could see rainbow halos. J

Occasionally, we would be joined by our neighbour’s kids or our cousins. Everyone in our locality learned to swim in our kulam. J

It really takes 2-3 days of continuous rain to fill up the pond. There is a chaal , a small channel on the 3^rd step from the top, so that when the water gets excess, it will flow through this channel into the paddy fields behind our land. So our pond never actually flooded. Even now, when the water fills up, I take a dip, but the fun isn’t there anymore( also because there isn’t anyone to look out, I get scared that a snake would show up and you know, I’d have to suffer the consequences :P). May be when I have kids, they get old enough to swim, the fun will come back J