By Sanuj Srivastava on SwimSwam
By this point, my fear of deep water had almost disappeared. The boy who had once cried and screamed for help in the deep end was now comfortable enough to jump in and swim toward the shallow side on his own. And for the first time, I found myself on the other side of the situation. Now it was my friend Satyam’s turn to face the fear that I had just overcome.
The problem was that Satyam didn’t want to come back to the pool. I had to convince him somehow, so I told him a small lie. I assured him that our coach wouldn’t make him go into the deep water and that we would just practice normally. Somehow, I managed to get him to the pool. After that, the rest was up to our coach.
Our coach gave Satyam almost the same challenge he had given me. He asked him to go into the deep water and swim. Satyam immediately started crying. I remember looking at him and realizing how much the situation had changed. Just a few days earlier, I had been the one screaming for help while everyone else watched and laughed. Now I was standing there watching Satyam, and I could finally understand what it felt like to be on the other side.
Satyam looked at me angrily, probably because he knew I had brought him there by lying to him. But our coach didn’t show him any mercy. He made him get into the deep water and swim. Somehow, between tears and panic, Satyam completed a lap. The moment he reached the side, he climbed out, picked up his bag and walked straight out of the pool. He didn’t listen to anyone. He didn’t stop to talk. He was done.
That was around April or May. Satyam eventually stopped coming to swimming altogether for almost another year. I, however, continued going.
Once my own fear had disappeared, something interesting started happening. I began challenging myself. I would jump into slightly deeper water and swim toward the shallow side on my own. I made a few new friends at the pool, and we started doing the same things together. There was no complicated training plan and no real understanding of swimming technique. We were simply kids who had discovered that jumping into the water and making it across was fun.
By the end of June, I could cross the entire length of the pool without stopping. Technically, however, my swimming was a mess. My technique was poor, and there was nobody around me who could properly explain what I was doing right or wrong. I had learned enough to move through the water, but I had no idea what proper swimming actually looked like.
There was, however, another group of swimmers at the pool who fascinated me. On one side, some swimmers were moving through the water incredibly fast. They were competitive swimmers, and compared with what I was doing, their swimming looked almost impossible. I remember watching them and thinking, “Can people really swim this fast?”
I started trying to copy them.
The problem was that I didn’t know what I was copying.
Sometimes water would enter my mouth while I tried to breathe. Sometimes my kick would completely stop. Sometimes, instead of turning my head to the side to breathe, I would lift my entire head out of the water. I didn’t know whether I was improving or making my technique worse. I was simply watching better swimmers and trying to imitate whatever they were doing.
Still, whenever the beginners had races at the pool, I somehow managed to finish second or third. I wasn’t training like a competitive swimmer, but I was naturally becoming faster.
Then July arrived, and schools reopened. The pool became less crowded, which meant the coaches could finally notice individual swimmers more closely. That was when I started coming onto my coach’s radar.
Around the same time, a new coach joined the pool. His name was Rakesh Mondal.
He trained the competitive swimmers, and his workouts looked extremely difficult to me. I would sometimes stand on the side and watch them train, wondering how anyone could survive those sessions. I wasn’t even a competitive swimmer at that point, yet watching their training was enough to scare me.
One day, a beginners’ race was organized at the pool. Both my coach and Rakesh Mondal were there. I entered the race and finished second. Then another race took place, and once again I finished second.
Something unexpected happened after that.
Rakesh Mondal didn’t go to the swimmer who had won. Instead, he walked over to me.
“Why don’t you prepare for competitions?” he asked.
I was nervous because I had seen the kind of training he gave to competitive swimmers. I had no desire to become part of that group. So, without really knowing what to say, I simply replied, “I have my 10th-grade exams, so I just swim for fun.”
That was my excuse.
But by July, I had unknowingly developed a few basic things on my own. I had started figuring out side breathing. My arm and leg movements had also become slightly better. The swimmer who was winning our beginners’ races was still swimming with his head up, almost like a river swimmer. Perhaps that was one of the reasons Rakesh Mondal noticed me instead.
He went over to my coach and spoke to him for a while.
A little later, my coach came toward me.
“There’s a swimming competition in Meerut District. Will you go?”
My immediate answer was no.
I wasn’t interested in competitions. More importantly, I was afraid that saying yes would somehow lead to something much bigger. I was worried that my coach might start making me train with the competitive swimmers.
At that time, I only knew freestyle.
I couldn’t even comfortably stand in deep water. I still depended on a kickboard whenever I wanted to practice kicking. Otherwise, I would simply swim freestyle from one side of the pool to the other without stopping and use the wall for support whenever I reached the end.
I had no idea how a proper competition worked. I didn’t know how swimmers trained for races. I didn’t know what a race pace was, what a proper start looked like, or even whether my technique was good enough.
As far as I was concerned, I was just a boy who had recently learned how to swim without drowning.
But the very next day, something happened that I had no idea would change the direction of my life. From that day onward, I was about to start learning how to become a competitive swimmer.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: The Bengali Coach Who Saw Something in Me – My Swim Journey Part 3
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