By Anjali Mehta
We are fortunate in having a huge, lovely park in our colony and on the days on which I can’t swim in the nearby pool, I walk around there.
I tried to reflect on which of these two activities I enjoyed more….
Swimming, apart from being an excellent all round exercise, also has the great psychological advantage that one is actually lying down (in a manner of speaking) while exercising. Also, minor personal embarrassments, such as a rather ample paunch can be concealed under the water while one goes about the task of getting them into shape!
The vibrant park environment has beautiful surroundings, friendly birds (who occasionally gift droppings from above), small animals, and also a human spectrum spanning all ages. Apart from walking, many older people are still able to contort their aging bodies into impressively difficult postures on the grass – truly a yogic triumph of mind over (resistant) matter! Sometimes I find an older lady dressed in a sari for her morning walk. In the vast sea of casual sportswear, it is quaint and strangely comforting as it somehow projects a seamless continuity between the generations. The tee-shirts of teenagers have funny sayings over the front. Sometimes I am able to just glimpse half a line and have to wait for a couple of rounds to get the full message in surreptitiously gleaned bits (given the poor social graces involved in staring at peoples stomachs). I specially enjoyed “I was an atheist till I realised I was God!”
The laughter therapy group often catches you off-guard making you jump out of your skin by suddenly erupting into loud laughter. It’s delightful to watch the effect of this on little kids nearby – they roll helplessly on the ground in mirth all the while pointing at the laughter group. The group’s objective of spreading happiness is clearly achieved!
Sometimes while walking, you feel many people are craning their necks this way and that to glimpse you better – it feels like a good antidote to your midlife crisis, till, on closer inspection, you realize that neck exercises are being performed.. Occasionally, a group of people walking by tell an interesting story loudly and one just has to resist the temptation to match one’s pace with them just to find out how the story ended !
In contrast, the swimming pool micro cosmos is more homogenous with a Marx-like socialist feel to it, consisting of a large and fairly uniform group of partially submerged bodies in a big water body. Identities also get concomitantly submerged as individual recognition clues like hair, eyes and body shape are obscured with cap, goggles and water..
This is the place to enjoy a spirit of collective belonging with fellow humans much like a school of fish swimming synchronously together. The interaction with nature can be stark – (all of) you and the sky directly above - a powerful experience.
What seems to emerge is choosing between a bracing environment with pleasant diversions vis a vis the enveloping, secure feeling of surrounding cool waters… best to wake up each day and decide what the need of that particular hour is…
