Hydrophilia

I am feeling more confident than ever before, with water.  It started a couple of weeks back when I set myself a challenge of an aquatic nature, at a spring here in Florida (ah beautiful place!). So there is this fairly shallow spring you can wade through with some deep sinkholes in its bed, through which the underground water flows out and feeds the spring.  Florida is a giant limestone shelf jutting out into the sea from the American mainland , and has a huge subterranean "river"  flow that slowly moves from north to south, and it sometimes flows out through the porous limestone to form a crisscrossing network of springs.  Limestone depressions are also behind the large number of lakes here.  But I digress. In this particular spring (called Chassahowitzka! It seems like Americans tend to symbolically atone for the sins of their ancestors, by having lots of Native American place names all over) one can swim underwater, go through one hole and come out at another. It sounds somewhat tricky, but actually seemed rather simple from the large number of people, including young children, doing it effortlessly.

The first day I was here, I couldn't even swim down low enough to reach the hole (which is around 9 feet deep).  I am not an accomplished swimmer, and swimming was one of the top things on my childhood hate list.  There was something dicomfiting about crowding into a pool (there aren't too many public ones in Calcutta) with fifty odd strange kids  and learning the tricks of the trade from bossy, poorly paid "trainers".  Despite a lot of pushing by Ma, I never became an expert swimmer.  The spring reminded me of this unfulfilled childhood expectation, and I decided I'd go back to our university swimming pool,  practice for some time and come back to it.

I did go back today, and successfully pulled off this 'trick', though not without a lot of deliberation on my part and encouragement from other people.  In general after two weeks of swimming, I feel a lot more comfortable with water. I actually like going to the pool these days. And I even feel the exotic urge to train in water sports like sailing or surfing or diving, at times. So Florida with its numerous beaches, lakes and springs, and the classic American ideal of sportiness have combined to rid me of my earlier ineptitude, and with it, a longstanding inferiority complex.