Dying and Dipping

I know what death must feel like. It feels like getting into the swimming pool on a cold winter day in Delhi. Thousands and millions of tiny little daggers were suddenly stabbing me from all ends. When I dipped my head in, my ears revolted in disgust and the ringing didn’t go for an hour after. My stubborn as hell self didn’t give up. So I tried to drag myself to the other end convincing myself that all I need is a warm up lap. All I needed was a brain – which by the way, also was frozen with my throbbing forehead. “No this isn’t happening”, I gasped in my head, “I can’t breathe”, and quickly, before the world closed itself around my eyes, I shut myself out and managed to swim back to the edge and get out. Yes I know what that chicken in my freezer must feel like. And yes, I know how it feels to be physically numbed till you can’t feel your own pinch.

Winter comes with long vacations. Home is where the paunch is. Even I couldn’t escape from Mom’s ghee-bhare paranthe and my favourite halwas. Indulge – I thought – and back in Delhi, all will be okay. That is a myth. The holiday weight isn’t. How does one lose the new year’s new layer of adipose tissue? I hate the treadmill. I hate the monotony of walking in one spot. It is depressing, to keep walking and yet stay in the exact same spot – almost like how we sometimes live our days, our weeks – we think we are walking, and yet the routine of the daily life sucks you right back and nothing has changed. So with that depressing piece of contraption out, I wanted to start taking real walks. But Delhi is cold and I like walking in the dark. Yes, I have issues. Like I don’t like the redundancy of the treadmill, I don’t like the visibility of the early evening. I like going for a walk when the sky is dark and no one really sees me. I like the invisibility of the night, when they can see you walk yet can’t see your face. I also don’t like walking with a phone or music. I like to just walk. And the dark of the winter is too cold for my warped activities.

So what do I love the most? Ah. I love to swim. But it is cold. Just how cold, I didn’t anticipate. Why haven’t they shut the pool down? Do they like inviting people to have just a little peep into numbing, icy death? And I hear people have been coming for a swim. They must not be human. They cannot be human. It is impossible to dip oneself in that chilled water and step out as if nothing happened – as if nothing evil struck your face, as if nothing icy smothered you and as if nothing menacing grabbed your lower back. And so, following really bad examples, I bravely and enthusiastically got into my swimsuit and stepped into that sinister body of coldness. I died. My short lived death lasted half an hour. Really. I am still reeling from that numbness. And sheer stupidity. I don’t think I can even look at that pool until April. And that too, is worth a second consideration.