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Learning to swim




In my days there were no public swimming pools. We learnt swimming in drains, rivers and mining pools.

Of these the mining pools were the most dangerous. They are shallow for about 5 meters and suddenly dip to 20 meters deep. It’s sort of V shaped. Once you cross over to the other end of the V it becomes shallow again. To the novice and non swimmers this can be very dangerous as you cannot fathom its depth. 

My uncle (my cousin Ananda’s father) was a good swimmer. On one swimming outing at the mining pool, I was trying to reach my uncle who was about a meter away when suddenly I could not find the surface. I went under water swallowing water all along. My uncle saw me struggling, came over, pulled me by the hair and put me back in the shallow waters. That was the last time I swam in a mining pool.

We were contented to swim in drains and rivers following the incident.


image (c) Lat

content (c) Ganapathy Ramasamy, mynameisgana@blogspot.com

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