I tried to escape from swimming, but initially, swimming would not let me go. Like most other things, I blame my mother for this. I was brought up as a kind of socio-biological experiment, in a faraway country, specifically far away from my relatives in Calcutta. When I eventually met them, I understood why.
This was not the only precaution that my mother took. She also ensured that I was never exposed to undue influences, such as friends. She vetted all candidates very carefully, and since she had very high standards, none of them ever came up to the mark. Some of them came from the wrong background. Some of them spoke funny. Some were not good-looking enough, while others were too good-looking. As a result, I was brought up in a kind of isolation chamber, unsullied by human contact. Within this chamber, my mother pursued her task of perfecting me.
Intellectually, I was satisfactory, especially after I grew a little older and learnt how to revise my report card with correcting fluid. The correcting fluid was provided by my father’s secretary. She was very kind. Or she had a guilty conscience, because of the war. I have no idea. Either way, she helped me improve my academic performance. I was once ranked 33rd, but I managed to change it to 3rd, a big improvement. But there were two areas where correcting fluid could not help. One was singing. The other was sports.
My mother was an accomplished singer, but her hearing was impaired by love. As a result, she tried to make me sing a lot. Eventually, when I did meet relatives, she made me sing to them. The plus side of this was that most of them tried to avoid me afterwards. On the sporting front, first we tried tennis, where I refused to chase the ball, and hit it out of the court when it was closer. After my tennis instructor had a nervous breakdown, we switched to swimming.
My swimming instructor was made of sterner stuff. He watched me cling to the railing and thrash my legs for close to six months, without saying anything much, except to warn the other children to swim slightly further away, in order to avoid head injuries. After a while, I realised I could take advantage of my flailing. My mother always sat close to the pool, sometimes with an ‘auntie’, so she could monitor my lack of progress. I realised that if I thrashed the water at a particular angle, I would be able to drench her and her companions. Like the correcting fluid, this too was a smashing success. After a few weeks, my swimming lessons were cancelled. Since then, I have rarely been near a swimming pool. On occasion, I have been waist-deep at the edge of one, sipping a cocktail, but not too often. I don’t really like cocktails.
Shovon Chowdhury’s most recent novel, Murder With Bengali Characteristics , contains a surprising amount of sporting activity, including cricket, boxing, and running away
