The first feeling of learning to swim in my life was in my native village, so I am a village boy. I am always proud of it. Because, those who are born in the village are born in the lap of nature and grow up in the infinite mercy of nature. Their minds are generous like the sky. Hard work, truthfulness and fairness are among their character traits.
Being a village boy, I learned to swim at a very young age like five other children in the village. There was no shortage of ponds in our village. They had three or four large ponds. One of the ponds was very big. He can be called almost long.
The name of this pond was "Big Pond". So the big pond was really big. The distance from one bank to another bank is like 300-400 yards. On the bank of this pond was a huge banyan tree and on the other bank was a big tamarind tree. Centuries old banyan tree and tamarind tree fell one day in a huge cyclone. Very childhood talk. I don't remember much.
The bank of this pond was re-tied and a large pond was constructed. I clearly remember, "Established year 1403" was clearly written on the ghat, which means that the ghat was built in Bengali 1403. I was probably five or six years old then, I don't remember exactly. As a result of building the ghat, the desire to swim is very intense, that's all I remember.
My mother had no interest in me learning to swim at such a young age. But, I didn't want to take a bath with my mother's hands in the water taken from the pond every day. I wanted to splash water with other boys and jump from the platform of the ghat. Besides, everyone my age could swim. Seeing them playing hide and seek in the water would make my chest burst with rage.
So almost every day I used to ask my mother to learn swimming. My mother used to say this, give me false promises and assurances. And I could only cry. So this is how I spend my days. In the meantime, one day my father saw him very dangerously picking up a football from the pond. If I try to lift something from the water without knowing how to swim, if I fall, I will definitely drown in the water.
Realizing this, my father started trying to teach me how to swim without grumbling. Perhaps Dad realized that keeping an eye on me all the time or forbidding me to go into the water - there was really no point in doing these things. The only solution is to teach me to swim.
My "learning to swim" started from the next day. During the bath, father took me into the water. He used to lift me up to chest water and keep me floating in the water with my hands under my stomach and chest. And I used to throw my feet into the water. Father did this for 4-5 days. In just 4-5 days my fear of water disappeared. Gradually I learned to jump in the water with my feet and to push the water from both sides with my hands.
For the next few days, Baba would bring me to the bottom of the ghat, which was half submerged in water, and release me into the shallow water. I used to hold the last step of the ghat which was under the water with one hand and threw my two legs desperately and kept the body floating on the water. Hmm, I did. This is how I was able to keep myself afloat. I was very happy that day.
After spending 2-3 more days like this, Baba did a strange thing. A pair of dried coconuts (Jhuno) was made by tying the two coconuts with a knot and making a strange thing. Now take the two coconuts in the water and release them. They both floated beautifully. After that, father left me with my stomach on top of the knot.
I screamed in fear at first. Later I saw two giant coconuts floating half-submerged on either side of my stomach, floating me completely. The fear disappeared instantly. Now I slowly started jumping in the water with my feet and cut the water on both sides with my hands and started moving forward. I floated towards the deep water. Of course, my father was coming next to me. This is a strange, indescribable moment. One of the most memorable moments of my life.
That was the day I discovered that I had learned to swim. Two coconuts just to boost my courage. Even without those two, I can swim just fine. I remember that day I was screaming with happiness. I can't say how happy I was.
I swam with coconut floats for the next week, but nothing happened after that. I became a great expert in backstroke, vertical swimming, floating swimming, diving swimming. I would not get out of the water until my eyes were red.
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