Tackling life, one Muscle memory and Trainer at a time
It’s a bright sunny October morning in 2018 and I find myself upside down under the water in a capsized kayak, with the cold Ganga river numbing my head and nose. I quickly lean forward towards the front deck, grip the paddle firmly, and sweep it against the water surface in a big arc from the bow to the stern. My upper body begins to come up as I try to straighten the kayak by doing the hip-flick — twisting my waist and pushing the kayak’s deck with my left knee. While I was regaining my balance, breath and sight at the end of this 5 second so called ‘Eskimo kayak roll’, I receive a big splash of water on my face as Dev, my trainer congratulates me on my first successful self-recovery of an overturned kayak! For the next two days I continued to follow the pattern of this technique until the memory of the weekend started to seep into all those muscles residing in the arms, legs, hips and neck. It felt like convincing myself that everything is under control, but is it ever?
Over the past three years, I have had more trainers than girlfriends, and more locations of muscle pains than actual bad memories. Just like a particular song evokes nostalgia of a long forgotten time, every muscle memory of a past skill reminds me of the life situation surrounding the time I took up that activity.
I remember starting both my Trekking and Performance poetry journey in January of 2016. I was in a peaceful relationship back then and my Dad had a successful life saving operation in September the previous year. And the thing about peaceful relationships and embracing mortality is that you get a lot of free time in your hand to try out new things that might seem scary or time-consuming. So one such weekend, I booked myself a spot in a poetry open-mic and a Mumbai trekking group event. Strangely, both these activities involved me experiencing a lump in my throat, cold feet and inability to see confidently ahead. So for the next 3–4 months, I went on several hikes, cliff rappelling, open mics, and witnessed my gaze at the audience and abyss becoming fearless, voice in my head and from my mouth becoming free and my feet approaching the trail and stage with more self-belief. While I learnt hiking from the numerous trek leaders of each trek, I polished my writing skills by attending workshops by Rochelle D’Silva and observing other fellow poets.
A few months later as I was getting more serious into the relationship, in order to deal with the uncertainty, I sat one night and brainstormed activities that a peaceful introvert will outrightly hate to get into. And I shortlisted two in only a few minutes. Dancing and Fighting seemed like the polar opposite of my definition of fun. So I enrolled myself into a Salsa dance academy for a 8 weeks basic course with my Ex. After 2 months of great learning and grooving, I realised that I could move only two of these three at the same time — Hands, hips and feet. Meanwhile, the boxing club was an old state government institution run in the parking lot alongside an open gym, karate classes and archery practice. The white Ring was surrounded by blue hanging punching bags, Rajan (my boxing trainer) and kids doing shadow boxing. I was apparently the oldest of the lot. For the next 2–3 months, I went there after office in the monsoons to dance like a moth and sting like a mosquito. Even today when I find myself alone in a parking lot or a wooden floor, I sometimes do a spot turn or a shadow jab-cross-upper cut.
The monsoon of 2016 ended and I dug up my box of fears to find my anxiety of turbulent water. So I again enrolled myself in Swimming lessons after a failed attempt two years ago. Luckily this time I got a strict badass trainer named Babu who promised me to teach it within a month. And he turned out to be right in the end, as next month I found myself doing breast stroke in the middle of the ocean in Thailand. I could imagine him shouting at me to properly sweep the water back with my arms and simultaneously do the frog kick with force and coordination.
In February 2017, I became single and took up Paragliding as a sport near Pune. The freedom appeared two-fold as I enrolled at Templepilots paragliding school for Open-sky pilot certification. The sport is not that physically intensive and is more about controlling your hands during kiting, take-off and gliding, along with being aware of all small variations in wind flow and obstacles through your eyes and skin. Then arrived July and I landed from the paraglider straight into kitesurfing destination of Zanzibar. While paragliding was more of a spiritual, peaceful and high stake aerial sport, Kitesurfing was adrenaline thumping, rapid and a comparatively safer sport. In this, I had to harness the coastal breeze to pull me forward while also balancing my body on the surfboard. Although I couldn’t train enough to do it completely, I did realise that Answers are always flying in the wind. I only need to wear a harness, steer the kite in the right direction and surf my way towards it. I might fall, I might even be dragged for metres at a stretch but even a single second of standing upright and surfing by the power of wind is enough to make everything worth it.
Later in September that year, I joined the basic Whitewater kayaking course in Rishikesh with Team4adventure. The thrill was similar to Kitesurfing but riding and cutting through the tall wall of waves was far more risky. My shoulders and back still ache when I remember paddling through the rapids of Ganga for kms at a time. On one such instance, I encountered a whirlpool which capsized my kayak and I had to eject in order to rescue myself. My trainer moved his kayak in front of me and I grabbed onto the kayak’s nose with my hands and feet, as he paddled me towards gentler waters downstream. As I breast-stroked perpendicularly to the currents towards the shore, I suddenly remembered my first trip to Haridwar with my family as a kid, with my mom scaring me with stories of how people get swept away and die. But today, after swimming through and crossing it on my own felt like lifting an immense mental block out of my memory.
Then arrived 2018, and I jumped from the river currents to the underwater world of Indian ocean in Indonesia. As I looked back to the journey of so many sports and activities, it felt like every part of my body from head to toe played different set of characters in different movies and backstories. If Trekking and rappelling felt like a binge-worthy TV series; Performance poetry felt like Emotional drama; Kayaking felt like a trailer of an action flick; Paragliding felt like a spiritual show; Boxing felt like serious one man movie with no sound; and Salsa felt like a comedy of errors. So when I achieved my Open water Scuba diving certification in August, I felt it was a mix of everything — it was meditative, it was slow, long, it had mystery, suspense and it had the adventure drama.
For a change, I can’t remember any emotional backstory to why I did this, maybe it was the uncertainty of career path that made me choose this wild and silent endeavour. Incidentally, the only muscle memory used was in keeping calm and modulating my breathing. The whole world came to a standstill and the only thing making you aware that you were alive was the Pressure in my ears and sound of me breathing.
There are still more genre of content to explore, many more muscles to flex. I have already started with Guitar in 2019 and looking forward to learning solo skydiving in 2020. I never really learnt from teachers in school and college, but every trainer and teacher who taught me in the past 3 years have played an immense role in my life. Moments like these when I remember this journey of experiences and overcoming my fears, being a jack of all trades doesn’t feel so wrong anymore.
