Way back in the late 1970s, when I was posted at Madras (now Chennai), we lived in Besant Nagar in a flat less than 40 paces from the sands of the Elliot’s Beach. Our sons were young (Asha and I too were!) and on Sunday mornings, we would swim in the sea.
I had taught all of them swimming in a regular pool and set out to teach them swimming in the sea, which is a bit different. The boys picked it up quickly, learning to duck under the water when a high breaker approached, because being struck by the edge of a fast breaker can be uncomfortable. Asha was, however, a bit unsure of herself.
There was then a sand bank about 50 metres from the beach, and when one stood on it, the water depth was less than a metre, with only the larger waves going across it to the beach. The water stretch between the beach and the sand bank was deeper and one needed to swim to the sand bank.
So one day, after Asha had practised on many weekends, I swam to the sand bank and beckoned to her to swim across to me. Beckoned, because the sound of waves masks even shouting.
In trouble
The boys were frolicking in the sea, and they paused to watch their mother swim across. She began well, and swam well until she was barely three metres from me, standing on the sand bank with water just up to my knees. At that point, when a breaker caught her unawares and struck her, she panicked. She began to flounder and thrash about in the water which was not more than a metre deep. I was shouting to her to stand up, but in her panic combined with the sound of the sea, she couldn’t hear. She reached me and, still thrashing about, managed to grab my shorts with one hand. Now I too was in trouble!
Still shouting to her to stand up, I hung onto my shorts while she was hauling them down. Soon after, she got her other hand on my shorts, but providence decreed that she discovered that she was in shallow water, and in standing up, exerted even more pull on my shorts, while I was now holding onto them with all my strength. All this happened in full public view! The boys were in paroxysms of laughter as they watched me trying to save my dignity. When our sons saw the draft of this article, one said: “Now I know why we are electrical engineers — our mother taught us how to remove shorts!”
sg9kere@live.com