SWIMMING

I'm the only one left in 202 now. Rucha left this evening on a volvo destined to find Pune. I went to college in the afternoon, finding places to stay for when we get to Rome and Napoli and all. I want to go to Sicily but there isn't enough time. Plus my parents don't seem to appreciate contrasty places. Anyway, this post is actually about swimming.

When I go swimming by myself I always do breadths. Lengths tire me quickly and give me muscle cramps. I'm not proud of this fact but whatever, it is how it is. I started off with 4 breadths. Then I floated around for a while. During this time, there where veins of lightning ripping through the sky. In Heritage's new swimming pool, you always see buildings on two of four sides. And you see a a vast expanse of sky between them. It curves like a fish-eye panorama. It's vaaaast. The skyward view from the old pool was crowded with changing rooms and plants and all kinds of nonsense. Today the sky was reddish and these veins of lightning were regularly tearing across it. The thrill of swimming during a thunder storm is something else. Lightning loves water so it's very dangerous but it feels so amazing to come up for air and see a huge flash overhead. There were a few raindrops too. They came mostly because of wind, not so much gravity - pulled away from their brothers and sisters from their cloud family to descend upon Sindhu in the pool (it would be more exciting to say that about a branch of lightning but no such thing occurred).

So then, back to swimming. Next I did breadth 6-11. Then chilled. Then did 11-20 in one shot. Then floated some more. Then did 20-27. By the time I got to this set I was counting the breadths in a different way, i.e. if I'm on breadth no.22 I say in my head "22 is 23". I keep focussing on my breathing and the sounds around me underwater that way. Then I did 27-35 and then 35-46. 46-50 were butterflies. My butterfly has improved so much since I've come to Bangalore, feels good.

After this I floated for a while till my head bumped into the side of the pool and then I got out and went back home. It felt weird toweling myself in the middle of all those tall buildings. Someone must have been watching somewhere, I have no idea who or where.

That's all I want to say really. Hope I didn't bore you too much with that. If you come swimming with me I won't be so serious. I'm going to be home alone for the next 2 days. I'm not scared, but if I keep seeing things like I usually do when I'm alone for long periods of time, it's going to be exhausting.

Bye carrot eaters!