May be it was December or November ,or could have been January very well. I don't remember. People love flower, books, smell or rain but I love water. Every form of it. I don't know why. I think the continuous undercurrent ,the dynamic equilibrium fascinates me. So, that month it had not rained. The place I lived had more swimming pools than ponds. I had to make peace with it.
I had some issues in my family. I was disturbed. Those issues were pretty serious. I hadn't called my parents for 2 months. The problem was stretching day by day and I couldn't concentrate on anything else. My mind was a autopsy room. My thoughts changed with blink of eyes. Often they were morbid. And when they were not, I analysed the why-nots . The problem with me was I couldn't share them with anyone. Not with friends, because I didn't think it would be wise to tell them such family secrets. And not with family, especially not with family. My work life was mundane, family was in shambles. For some weird reasons I wasn't taking calls from my best friend. Not weird, but I knew she would ask me to think. She would force me to take action. She won't leave me, until she knows I'm fine. She had tried doing that, over the last couple of days. But I didn't want that. I wanted to feel nothing. I wanted to hear nothing. I wanted to make sure, I could feel even without thinking. But she would force me to talk to a therapist, she would force me to return home, she would ask me questions I didn't want to answer. That's another reason I didn't tell my friends. I wanted nothing more than a few minutes of peace in that chaos.
The society I lived in, had a swimming pool. It was a week day actually a week night. I don't remember which day it was. But the pool side was empty. I had came down there probably at 8 PM or so. And it was already 1 AM. But I didn't want to go. My legs were numb. I had them in water, the whole time. My hair was a mess. The tears on my face had dried. I was looking up . I didn't have my glasses on, so the sky was only long stretch of blankness. At that moment I heard a splash.
Someone jumped into the pool. I didn't have my glasses on, so I couldn't guess who it was. But who ever they were, they were small. I hated interruptions, also I wanted to know it was . Reluctantly I put my glasses on. The world came back into focus. It was a teenager. May be fourteen or sixteen. I had seen her around the place. May be she lived in the P block . She was wearing a mismatched pair of Pokemon pyjamas. Her hair was in a loose pigtail. She was not swimming. She was just standing in the middle of the pool. She stood there for few minutes. I don't know how many. I wanted to ask what she was doing at that time in the night, outside of her home, alone. But I couldn't. Her hands were clenched, she had a frown on her face, her face was wet. Tears or water, I'm not sure. She was oblivious to her surrounding. She hadn't noticed me, or may be had noticed and it didn't matter. Her eyes were zeroed on something high.
She was looking at her apartment. The lights were on. There were silhouettes in the large balcony window. It was very high, at the 14th level or 15th level perhaps. There were two people in that silhouette, some very aggressive gestures were there. I couldn't decipher what was going on. But In the mean time, my mind raced to another place, another time and made some conclusions. I looked at the girl now. She was still standing in the middle, looking at her apartment. The only change in her was ,her hands were now clenching and un clenching rapidly, with every breath she took. Suddenly, one shadow pushed another . And the girl became a statue. I don't know what happened, but she jerked , as if lighting had stroke on her and then she became a statue. Then as suddenly as she had became a statue, she came alive. This time she knelt down in that pool, and started parting the water with both of her hands. She kept her face down in the water. She hit the water with force . In the beginning she had a rhythm, but after sometime they became uneven, abrupt and more forceful. Perhaps she was searching something. Or may be she was digging a hole. All this while she kept her face buried inside the water. I was worried about her. I wish I had my phone with me. My fingers were etching to google, how much time one can stay under water without taking a breath ? I was becoming desperate. I thought of shouting , then thought of calling the guard . But I didn't have to think much, her face emerged and she looked up. With her I also, looked up. The two shadows were now one. May be embracing or reconciling. I don't know what. I looked back at her. She was looking up.
Slowly her foot slipped, her body, bent, she became horizontal with the surface. But she couldn't do it for long. She would lose her balance, sometimes she would bent over. Sometimes she would touch the bottom, sometimes her feet would bent on their own and touch the bottom . It took a lot of effort from her to remain in that position. I knew the struggle. Because, that's how I had learnt how to keep afloat . Then how not to let the current carry you and finally how to swim.