Bombay for me has turned out to be the city of swimming pools. Never mind that I grew up in Jamshedpur, where club memberships (complete with pools) were offered to us all on a platter. I still didn’t know how to swim. And so it was that when I arrived in Bombay, 24 years old and with a newly acquired job, I couldn’t so much as float.
But where could you swim; in a city were club pools were the preserve of those with old money or of those with new? Where the vast Breach Candy swimming Pool across the road from my exorbitant paying guest pad, was still ‘Mostly European only’?
Plenty of places, it turns out, though this was a discovery I was to make in need-to-know driblets. First there was the YMCA pool at Agripada , the generously populated pool my banker friend and batch mate K went to. Despite a childhood full of air force station postings, K like me could not swim. Now driven by hitherto undiscovered aquatic instincts, she woke every morning at five, to trek to the crowded pool where coaches stood out of the water and desultorily directed the cork float trussed up tenderfoots . 30 coming-to-work-with-dripping-hair days later, she had , for less than the price of a restaurant meal, learnt to swim.
As for me, I had would have to wait four years , two shifts of residence and one baby later, to begin my aquatic apprenticeship. Those were the days of the Juhu Centaur, whose sea –overlooking vast lawns would be hired out for parties and parades. The pool, sparkling blue and ringed by palm trees that swayed in the sea breeze, was all of 25 metres long. And the crowd that swam there was wonderfully rambunctious, Lorena who lived in the hotel and swam with lipstick and long hair, Simran the stunning sardarni who swam 40 laps in long and powerful free style and middle aged Ashok who swam his constitutional mornings and evenings. And Hilary, who taught me to swim, coaching neophytes with casual ease , setting up coin chasing competitions and other scuba fun. Alas, today the pool, when you espy it on Google Earth, is a rectangle of white, all drained after months of legal wrangling over the hotel and what’s worse the discovery of a dead body in the pool.
There were other hotels whose pools one could swim in like the Ramada or Sea Princess or Sun-n-Sand , for a per day charge of a few hundreds, or an annual amount of 15 or 20 thousand. But they all seemed small, puddle like even, you couldn’t tread water endlessly or lie on your back and watch the jets go by, like you could at Centaur.
Still , my girls were now 4 and 6 , and as summer came, a swimming pool became a hang out zone the holidays were hot and bothersome without. I stumbled eventually upon in what would turn out to be a wonderfully educative pool – the Andheri Sports Complex pool. Post all the queuing and the paperwork ( and there was lots ) the diving pool and the Olympic size main pool were great places to swim in , where groups of of lithe young swimmers flipped and snorkeled, crawling, diving ,and skimming the water like inspiringly energetic sea creatures. All for an annual fee of Rs.1200. But then I guess pools like other Piscean personalities also have their life cycles. It’s been three years since the Andheri Sports Complex pool closed down for repairs. Now like a nomad I wander, with a butterfly stroke here, a dog paddle there and free style everywhere.
Sometimes at National Sports Club, an old fashioned Bombay Gymkhana kind of pool or at Bandra’s lagoon-like pool at Otters Club . In building pools, like the nicely clubby one at Hiranandani Powai, where our friends live. Occasionally at the posh ‘The Club’ next door, where you can pay a few thousands to swim for a month. This month it’s at the little Renaissance club off Four Bungalows where Ujjwal Sir, the greatly dedicated coach who’s rumored to live in the water, trails tiny groups of learners in methodical breadths across the shallow.
This feature appeared in the Sunday Times April 2007
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