My Water Bubble

Some people think they know themselves. So well. Every facet, every thought, every reaction seems to bring no surprise. And I never was one of them. But then, I thought I had the basics right. A person who can manage fairly good in academics, quite comfortable with elocution, clumsy as hell in anything to do with sports or grace, okay at friendship, good at maintaining relationships, and really senti whenever things ended. But then, everyone's life has that moment. If you're lucky, you'll have not just one, but many of these. This moment alerts you to some change in you, some parts of you flipped inside out, to show colours which never existed on your spectrum before. This change can be a slow, subtle and calm one, or it can be a huge bang, boom and splash. The calm one is peaceful, so where's the fun in that? The banging change is the one that turns your world upside down, making
everything topsy-turvy and is something every adrenaline junkie eyes. I never knew I was such an adrenaline junkie before.

Joining IIT was an eye opener. People juggling 2-3 genres and excelling in each were a fiction of my fantasy previously, and they all took true shape and form in the form of my seniors and batchies here. I joined the NSO swimming in hopes of getting not only leaner, but fitter and doing at least one sport in life (which wouldn't make me sweat, as a plus). Slowly, the sport grew on me. Being a naturally extra-talkative person, I have a mind that's never at rest, at peace with itself or the surroundings. And the water provided a silence, a peaceful and profound silence which was broken every time I breathed. Made me see every breath as an entity, an event. And I began to fall in love with the quiet lapping of water, just as I loved the violent waves created when someone swam. I continued with swimming through my first year, and through the summer that followed. With a little encouragement, and unconventional advice, all of a sudden, I found myself eyeing a position in the Inter-IIT swimming team. I worked towards it. Worked hard, living each day without any expectation, just with dreams.

Lets fast forward to the point where the (Pre) Inter-IIT camp began. It was going to be more than 2 weeks of sheer hard work and absolute dedication. I was never so excited after coming to IITB, as I was when it began. Even before the camp, I was fairly regular with swimming, but the camp was something different. By now, I recognized everyone in the team. There was Teena (Tarun Meena), our captain, Moghe (Rahul Moghe), last year's football secy, Suyash Abnave, Lalla (Shubham Lalwani), Kedar Joshi, Karan Gupta, Ashwin Kanhere (the tallest guy I knew, and still know), Abhishek Shende, Freshie Dubai (Arnesh) and some more guys I didn't know by name then, but know so well now. In the girls team, I pretty much knew everyone- Kavya, Alekhya Audi, Shilpi, Bindita and Archy. The beginning of the camp was one of the huge markers of this change in me. I started looking forward to being systematic, a really messed up sleep cycle suddenly jumped back on track, and waking up at 6:30 am for 1.5-2 hours of swimming, followed by classes through the day, and 2-2.5 hour practice again at 6:30 pm followed by dinner by the team seemed to bring more pleasure than exhaustion. The team slowly grew on me, and as we got to know each other better, the usual process of giving embarrassing nicknames began. (Not mentioning any of the stories here :P ) I became Awwrat, Kavya became Towel, Audi became Gaadi, Bindita Bidi, Teena stayed Teena before more interesting nicknames came his way, Suyash became Dhanya and Thermo, Lalla and Moghe retained their names, and similarly the rest of the team got their weird nicknames too. The nicknaming process seemed to be more of an acceptance into the team to me, than the actual selections ever did. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and crazy amounts of killing practice with the same team makes you bond. BIG TIME. Quoting Harry Potter, because there's always something to relate to in that masterpiece series, no matter what you're going through, 

"There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them."

And we knocked out 20-foot mountain trolls (that's what I'm gonna compare our workouts to. So you know what we survived), together. We got tanned worse than Ross did, at the sun, and another thing I knew about myself was altered. I didn't really care much about the tan, while a tan of this magnitude would've made run for cover previously. We became the swimming family, and my respect for the team was intensified when I saw seniors and alumni coming for practices and events alike.

This was life before inter-IIT officially began.

Then came the actual beginning. I have never seen myself as such a team player. The amount of effort I put into trying to help our teammates stay cheered and helping them prepare for their events showed me a caring side of me I rarely explored. I have yelled myself hoarse at every water polo match, I have enjoyed every swim by every team member, and I have loved every minute on the last day when each of us were repeatedly thrown into the water, with heavy, dripping clothes. I saw me becoming more mature, more organized and learnt to prioritize what really mattered. Also, I found what really mattered.

For event updates of the 4 days, check out my champion friend, Ashwin Kanhere's blog ageekyswimmer.wordpress.com, because I can't bring myself to do it, in the awesome way he did. I think it suffices to say on my part, that I have loved and lived every minute like I never did before, I swam, laughed, worried, ran and cried like I never did, and to say these were the best 4 days (and 2 weeks preceding them) after coming to IIT would be an understatement, because these were the best days of my life. There has been life, and then there has been this time with my team, which was like dreaming dreams I never thought I'd dream before. It was a time when exhaustion stripped us of any energy to be diplomatic, or to think before we talked (which isn't one of my strong points anyway), and hence absolute honesty and pure, unadulterated friendship were all we could manage. No it doesn't take much effort, and the results are splendid. We're a team, tired, tanned, but together. We mourn that some of us will leave this year, but we don't actually mourn because we have seen evidence to show they never truly leave. We meet and embarrass each other by being the loudest idiots in public, but even knowing this silliness is the only thing on agenda, we turn up promptly at every meet. And now, I'll try to get back to life before Inter-IIT, or rather try figuring out what that life was about. A friend of mine pointed out there was an Iyer before Inter-IIT, but there's an Awwrat walking out of it.