Storyline: There may be times when we find ourselves with no big thing happening in our lives. A sweet nothing? Nay! The pool is always there for us–to welcome us back with coziness and to offer support that our wrenched and wrecked souls seldom need.
Courtesy: thehindubusinessline.com
During many days, at 4 a.m., I keep saying to myself that my life will be apples soon. So I make my way to practice in a rather pessimist manner. It is a place where I keep away insecurities and weaknesses, and concentrate (instead) on the one thing am blessed with, namely, the ability to Swim.
Well, readers, if am mithering you with my drought of clarity, I am sorry. The above lines are in perfect symphony with my regular thoughts when I go for my swim in the early morning.
Yes, indeed! I am a swimmer who bosses on the thought 0.01 sec is the last thing I want to see on the clock. In a nutshell, almost anyone who loves, and has been involved with, this sport of supreme class has moaned before the rise of sun and joyed after rise of the biggest star that humans will ever know (the Sun).
Harsha Bhogle, one of the Cricket’s prominent voices once said: “It is human nature to underrate the present and grossly overrate the past.” I have read that line many times. And there are days when these few lines give me the biggest goose bumps and offer questions that are hardly answered. Am I really underrating my present time and putting into oblivion all those great people who have inspired me? Am I really overrating my childhood? It is what I enjoyed the most. Or, say, is nostalgia clouding out my consciousness?
Michael Phelps (Photo courtesy Getty Images)
Fair to middle, when I thought of going down the drain in my life and contemplated to end my life without any dignity, I have watched one good video each of my heroes in the pool, Phelps and Lochte. For a rig-welted soul like mine, those put me straight out of the underdrawin’ of my insecurities–if only to see light in pool and career and more importantly, in dealing adversaries in life.
A few minutes into my waking up and my presence in the pool, my coach would say, “Awright, Ravi, 2×400, 5×500, take a big breathe, and repeat. Ey up, son,”
When I was naïve and could hardly think beyond foolery, I used to cry under the water in pain (Y’ll swimmers know what pain am referring to, aren’t you?). As time and tide passed by I found in Swimming an asylum away from the seething sun of the subcontinent’s heat. Seven years ago, when Phelps took the gold at Beijing (in one of the most scintillating finishes ever), little did I know about the importance of time management. Little did I know, too, about Lochthe and his timeless backstroke.
Like a few poms, I’ve read a lot of my heroes in print, and watched ‘em over the internet’s videos, many a time. What I’ve felt through my understanding of them is a bit more intense than I can actually write. On a writer’s perspective, they’re eulogistic in print and encomiastic in voice should you wish to speak on a public form.
Ryan Lochte (Photo courtesy ESPN.GO.COM
John Ray once said: “Beauty is its power; a smile is ‘tis sword.” Watching Phelps at his sublime matrix is nothing short of it. Think about this scenario. You are in an international arena of sport. Men in flesh and blood keep making their way to the start-up area, just like ants in an enviable sequence. You are literally on the edge of your seat as you see your heroes enter. One of them should be Phelps, the other Lochte. You can hardly wait for the hooter to go off. A few minutes later, you hear a sound and they’re off in the water.
You’re ecstatic. You’re nervous. You’re on the edge of yer seats. You can hardly hold yer pint. And, then, you see Phelps touching the wall first, accompanied by Lochte. You are emotional and waving your flags with pride and passion. A few of you are dropping tears and enjoying yer last remains of pint.
What do ya think of this? How do you describe this ecstasy? To me, as Ray said, that’s beauty. A few moments later, you see the guys appreciating their counterparts and offering them support in words. To me, that epitomizes everything this beautiful sport is all about.
If sport is bigger, then, sporting spirit is the biggest. Isn’t it? Sod satiation. Sod perfection. Sod immortality.
Courtesy: weekendnotes.com
I understand that life offers us many a dire strait. But, to me, that hostility should not jail us to our beds. Like gladiators of ore, we should–just like our heroes–leave those comfort beds before everyone and return home jiggered before our mates can hardy wake up. Period.
Swimming taught me no matter how tough it is down the road, we can get up and live a life of nobility slowly, but surely. Technically speaking I am not elegantly adept with the sport, but I am emotional when leaving the water. It is where I find a home away from home, a meaning to life, and a perfect riposte to my cynics and critics. I swim to my heart’s consent, and, I’ve the best craving to enter water.
There may be times when we find ourselves with no big thing happening in our lives. A sweet nothing? Nay! The pool is always there for us–to welcome us back with coziness and to offer support that our wrenched and wrecked souls seldom need. Reight?
This column is from the lover’s perspective of the sport written by a non-professional swimmer who is trying to put his heart and tongue in words. So, dear readers, if you find reading this uncomfortable, or say, you mean I am not qualified to write on a sport as big as this, y’ll are mistaken.
I am forever indebted to Swimming. I say this because, if not for swimming, I would have ended myself in the soil beneath the ground and covered with bricks and cement, a grave. I learnt from this sport mental toughness, specifically, to live in thoughts passable with dignity and largesse of the heart that demands to deal any misplacing in times ahead. Aren’t we grateful to our sport? Aren’t we in love with immortality? ‘Appen, though. Come back end (autumn), the plantation would dress to ‘tis superficial finesse.
Courtesy: wellandgoodnyc.com
My thesis here is this: if you a swimmer, like me, then you’ll enjoy doing it as a few of yer mates keep chelpin’ about many things that life hath offered them with. If you’re a swimmer like me (which you really are), you hardly get radged by anything that’s happening and are least bothered, for you–like me–find solace in the water.
All that hath been said and done so far, which is true, there’s little of the above that can tell us anything about how we feel going into water or summon up the heart-wrenching moments we go through, as swimmers and professionals. There’s little, too, that can narrate any tale or lead to an epistolary that we, in water, are blessed to do with.
However, I believe kindred spirits are the unseen moons that haven’t kept me at bay in reaching to you, dear readers (family), and are the real reasons that allow us to appreciate beauty in its beatific manner.
Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, to me, in water are one of the seraphic adjectives of the sport. Anna Freud once said: “I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.” I just echo with her during this midnight hour of deafening silence.
To speak with entire candor the present day morals and the future immortals constitute the within in the aforementioned lines. They are to me warriors and men-at-arms for they are a part of dreamy solicitations of indescribable afterthoughts. I will, till my last breath, embrace the shabby remains of my defeat and the jollity of success with revered dignity.
Michael and Ryan, may you–in future–enjoy the fruits of vast and heroic labors.
May you continue to serve as the gleeful confidants of the golden past and bright-hued hopes of the future, for you are above the canons of Father Time.
Respects.
