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My struggle with hydrophobia and journey to learn swimming

 

A boat at the bank of a river


I can still remember my childhood days when I was afraid of water because I didn't know how to swim.  The fear of water was so much deep into my mind that I often observed myself drowning in water in a horrible nightmare. I have always wanted to learn to swim so that I could get rid of this hydrophobia. Even there are instances when this panic grew more in mind. For example, I remember traveling on a ferry in the holy river Ganga to go to a pilgrimage site with my parents in my childhood days. Once, there was a time when we could not see a sign of land even to the horizon range. And we were surrounded by water from all directions. I was terrified of this view and wanted to reach any bank of the river immediately. Anyway, we reached our destination safely and enjoyed the holiday a lot. Again, there are very similar instances, when my parents went on some beach to enjoy holidays but I always used to avoid going deep into the waves because of the fear of being carried away by waves. All these instances made me think about how much important it is to learn to swim. But I never got the opportunity to learn swimming because there was no nearby pond in our village. Time passed by, and years passed by, the motivation to learn swimming increased day by day. Then I get into college Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad to do my higher degrees. In the second year of my master's degree, we have to do an internship at a different institute.  In this regard, I went to the National Institute of Science and Technology, Berhampur, Odisha. I was surprised to see that there was a swimming pool in the college and the most surprising thing was there were many interns like me who also wanted to learn swimming. All of us went to the swimming pool authority manager with our request to enroll us in the swimming classes. After many conversations, the manager agreed. Then, we all went to the swimming classes the next day with our swimming costumes after completing our lab works in the evening.  We learned a little floating and kicking. I still remember that I was the one who had not even moved a single inch through the whole swimming class that day. Well, it was not because I didn't try my best. I tried hard and applied my total effort, but the technique was wrong, due to which I didn't get the proper drift for the forward push. Anyway, I was excited that day because at least today I started to learn swimming. That night at the dinner table, each one was talking about swimming. On the next day, we again went to the swimming classes after completing our lab works in the evening, and we again worked on floating and kicking techniques. That day was good, and I got some of the methods corrected with practice, which resulted in the proper drift required for the forward push. Again, a good day went by. However, the trainer was not disciplined and enthusiastic, and due to this, the third class of swimming never came in the entire internship period of 2 months. At least, we gained some memories of swimming with water, which overcame a slight fear of hydrophobia from my mind. After completing the internship program of two months, I was fully determined that I would learn swimming, but how? At that time a swimming pool was being built in our college. When I got the news that the swimming pool had been started and the enrolments for the swimming classes were going on. I immediately filled up the swimming classes form. The enrolments were totally come early and enroll early basis because the authority has decided to limit the number of students to 30 for each batch for safety purposes.  Fortunately, my name came to the list of 30 in my batch. Again I started learning swimming with all my efforts. I enjoyed the swimming classes. The days turned into months, seasons came and went by, but I never left the swimming classes. In this progress, three years went by, and today, I know every swimming stroke, freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly. I also used to play water polo games in college. In this series, I won a medal in 100m freestyle in annual aquatic competitions, and also got the opportunity to represent myself for a water polo event from my college for Inter IIT competition in 2017. 


Today I have overcome my fear of hydrophobia, but still, I don't play with tidy waves while enjoying vacations. 



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