On most days, Ma drives us to the club. After she fights with another member for a spot and parks the car, we walk past the badminton court and the café with tiny sandwiches, past the reading library and past the room where old people wrinkle their noses at playing cards and throw them down angrily when they lose. When we reach the pool area, we change into our costumes, and Ma sits somewhere in the corner to hide from the sun and watch over us while we swim. Honestly, though, most of the time, Ma is looking around at everyone else but me and Ashu, and I have to call out Maaa! Look! again and again to show her a new move I’ve learnt. I’ve decided that I don’t hate the pool anymore. Turns out the sea monster thing was just a joke. Sea monsters can’t make it to a pool – it’s too far!
When Ma is busy or has a headache, she asks Mrs Shome to take us and we ride to the club in her car with the window down, letting the evening wind tie knots in our hair, and the bumps on the road make bruises on our bums. Sometimes, if we are too early for class, Mrs Shome lets us stop at a shop and pick up butter biscuits or momos from the street with a spicy-sweet sauce even though there is a no-eating-before-swimming rule. She says it doesn’t really matter, and is just a silly rule made up by grown-ups for no reason. And even though Mrs Shome, just like Ma, sits close to the pool and reads whatever book she gets from home, I have a feeling that she is always looking out for us.
If we go in the mornings, it’s a little cold in the pool at first, and our teeth chatter and make noises when we go in. Usually, after a while, we forget about it. But in the afternoons, the water is hot. Sometimes Rahul also comes to swim with us, but he is an advanced swimmer, and I know this because he keeps talking about it. He can already breathe underwater like a goldfish and do summer-saults in the pool. I asked Ashu if they’re called winter-saults in December, and he just laughed. Rahul can also do this thing where he jumps in and stays underwater for as long as we count. When we’re tired of counting, we give him a little tap under the water, and he pops right up. Because he doesn’t need to learn swimming like we do and is there just for fun, sometimes he floats towards us in the middle of a lesson to talk to Ashu or to kick his legs up in the air or something and then floats back away.
Coach always walks around, a blur in maroon, and whistles all the time while saying things like: Jump in, you girl or One, two, three or Paddle harder, faster, harder. When he says these things, Ashu and Rahul put their hands up to their mouths and snicker loudly. I keep asking them what the joke is, but they just look at each other with a glint in their eyes and scoff at me. It’s a teenager thing, they say. Then they splash water at me. I’ve decided: When I become a teenager in a few years, I won’t tell them my jokes either.
Ma carries this small yellow-coloured tube that looks like a banana and squeezes out thick sunscreen tap-tap-tap onto her palm and onto us before we go inside the pool. She smears my arms and my cheeks and my neck in dots, and I have to guess what she is drawing on my skin. Today, Ma went round and round on my back, and I guessed it was a jalebi, which is my favourite sweet in the world. It wasn’t. “A mosquito coil? A snail?”
“You got it,” said Ma.
“Which one? Which one, Ma?”
“Hmm.”
She was looking somewhere else as she answered. “Oh, the coil. Good job.”
When I reminded her that she forgot Ashu, Ma pulled him towards her and covered his arms with so much paste that he looked like a ghost and I wanted to giggle.
“Ma, do I have to?” Ashu said sheepishly. “I look – ugly.”
“On the contrary,” said Ma, continuing to lather on the cream. “The sunscreen is a major improvement.”
Ashu huffed and mumbled something under his breath. Rahul was hanging around us too, but he didn’t look like he had got any sunscreen on him at all.
Then, Ma put her sunglasses on and sat down on a lounge chair that looked like a bed. I once tried Ma’s sunglasses, but they were too big for me, and everything became so dark and black that I couldn’t see anything – not even my hands!
Rahul jumped into the pool headfirst, while Ashu and I walked down the steps to the shallow end. Coach came up to Ma. He was probably telling Ma some jokes because she laughed. Or maybe he was talking about us. I turned to discuss this with Ashu, but he was too busy talking to Rahul. Rahul is the same age as Ashu, though he is much, much bigger. Everything about him is a bit bigger. His laugh, his teeth, his hair, and even his swimming trunks that go down to his knees.
They were discussing who could stay underwater the longest.
“I bet it’s me,” Ashu said.
When Rahul asked Ashu if he could prove it, Ashu laughed nervously and splashed water at him.
I kept looking at the two of them. I wondered why Ashu was showing off and telling lies. Ashu doesn’t really like being underwater, not even for a minute, not at all. Besides, why weren’t they asking me?
“I can.” I stuck my chin out.
Both of them laughed this time.
“Really, I’ve been practising!” Ashu and Rahul first looked at each other, then searched to see if Coach was around. He was still talking to Ma. How long could this joke be?
“Okay,” Ashu agreed after a minute of thinking. “You can try to hold your breath underwater for a few seconds.”
I said I could do that. I’d been practising under the tap at home.
Glug glug. I made a fishy face. “See?”
They grinned.
Alright,’ Rahul said. ‘On our count.’
“And come up when you feel like you can’t breathe, Mira, okay?” Ashu held my hand for one second then let it go.
I nodded earnestly, even though my heart was doing a little dance in my chest.
“One– two– th–”
I bent my knees and dunked my head under the water, and sat cross-legged on the floor of the pool. I decided I would not get up from there until I reached a minute at least. That would show them, I thought, that I could join their games. I saw so many legs – jumping, splashing, dark legs, light legs, hairy legs, Ashu’s legs – long like toothpicks, straight and awkward; Rahul’s thick ankles, too, which were now kicking Ashu. Above the water was the sun, which was reaching my toes in little squiggly lines, and I felt cool liquid all around me. Above the water was also Ma, her eyes probably squinted, laughing. Green sunglasses. Maroon swimming shorts and a whistle.
I could hear almost everything going on above me, but it sounded wavy. Like when you put your head on the desk in the classroom, and you hear voices travelling through the wood and floating into your ear.
It was getting harder to hold my breath. But I had to keep counting. I opened my eyes wider and focused on noticing things nearby. Bits of hair floating around, a few coins with which I would buy ice cream if only I could reach them, and a fat yellow bee. The bee was drifting down towards the pool floor in crazy circles. Can bees swim? Was the bee dead? I gulped a little pool water as I tried to hold it in my hands to check, but it kept floating away. I followed it, kicking my legs wildly towards it, but the closer I got to the bee, the more it kept going to the deep end. I realised that I was also going towards the deep. No ground. No coins.
Water quickly entered my nose and my mouth, and I was gulping it now, like one glass at a time, trying to breathe. It tasted like soap and stung my throat. I began to cough when suddenly, I felt someone’s hands on me, and I was jerked out of the water.
Air.
“She’s okay!”
It was Coach. He’d held me under my arms and lifted me out of the pool. Ma was standing with him, and she pulled me into a tight hug that almost choked me. I coughed and she thumped my back one-two-three.
Both Ashu and Rahul loitered behind Ma.
“Why didn’t you come up, idiot?” Ashu hissed at me, looking worried. Rahul was standing beside him, eyes down. Suddenly, he looked much smaller than before.
I gasped. “I’m – I’m a fish, too.”
“What the hell happened?” Ma turned to shake Ashu’s shoulders which trembled like a plate of jelly.
“We – we were playing a game – you have to hold your breath underwa–”
“I’ve told you before,” Ma hissed, “to look after your sister.”
Then she flung her hand out and slapped him across the face. “Haven’t I?”
Excerpted with permission from Hot Water, Bhavika Govil, HarperCollins India.
