Experiments with drowning

Kuldip Singh Kabarwal

ALMOST everybody, especially rural youth, wishes to learn swimming. In my village, we were not allowed by our parents to bathe in the village pond, like all other boys of the neighbourhood.

During the long summer vacation,  when the boys returned after grazing cattle, many of them would enter the pond riding on buffaloes, or by holding their tails. They would swim and enjoy for long hours. 

There was another huge pond in the fields on the western side of the village with clearer water. One afternoon, seven-eight boys, including me — ranging from 10 to 12 years — went to the pond. On being prodded by others who were all adept in swimming, I too entered the pond. I had waded only a few feet when my feet were soon hanging in the deep water and I began to drown. I was extremely frightened. Luckily a boy who was close behind caught my hand and dragged me after him. I was thus narrowly saved, and was admonished by my mother. 

I then resolved never to enter deep waters in that manner. But a few years later in 1954, during my college days, four of my classmates and hostellers decided to swim in the nearby canal. They persuaded me to accompany them. One of the boys had managed to get an inflated truck tube from somewhere. They had planned to float in the canal by clinging to the tube. They asked me to do likewise. The starting point was close to the headworks from where the canal took shape from the river. The water was ice-cold whereas the day temperature stood at 45ºC. We had covered a very small distance, when one of my friends spotted something curious floating on the water. He left the tube and swam towards it. Without thinking about my predicament, all others  also abandoned the tube and swam in that direction. Boys are boys, always careless, seldom having foresight. In their fun and frolic, no one thought what might happen to me. 

With the last friend leaving the tube, only my arm was left around it. And so, it suddenly tilted upwards and I went underwater. Perhaps, I had raised the alarm, making my friend turn around towards me as he exhorted the others also to return immediately. When he put his arm around the tube, it came into lateral position and my head and mouth rose above the water. Again, I had a narrow escape. 

The third episode took place after a few days, just near that spot in the adjacent channel, when I, along with many other boys, tried to learn swimming with the help of a rope tied across the channel. Since many people were present there, the situation was controlled easily. I was again saved, but sadly, could never learn swimming.