The Last Lap
‘On Your Mark’.. (Whistle).
Kuppy flew off the cemented stub and dove head-down straight into the cool and heavy green water. All the cheers and sounds that were buzzing around so long suddenly became muffled into a continuous and incoherent low rumble, a hint of faint sounds floating from a great distance.
It was the Annual Swimming Competition, probably the last one Kuppy would ever get to participate in. This was not just a race with friends in the water for her. It was her lust for life. Lust would be the more appropriate word, not love. Love is strong but tender. Lust is wild and extreme and desperate.
Kuppy had spent the last few minutes before diving considering her last chance to revel in her dying aquatic life; and she felt her heart choking up in her throat. It reminded her of being dumped by her first love; how she felt numb and weightless, how her heart was beating loud, almost in her throat, as if it was unsure if it should continue its activity and went on knocking to get the assurance of being correct; how she wanted to grasp on to something, anything and save the sinking (relation)ship but wasn’t able to move a muscle. It was a gnawing ache Kuppy couldn’t exactly point at, and a low buzzing sound that dimmed the morning lights, made her feel restless and helpless and incapable of thinking practically, logically, turned her mouth dry.
Here it was happening all over again. She was grateful to have her fair share of experiencing the joy of ruling water, and yet she could not get rid of some kind of nagging discomfort. She was restless once more and didn’t have a place to unleash her rising unease. She felt breathless, and for a moment even thought she couldn’t make it through the competition. Maybe she would collapse before that, or burst into tears, or do something stupid. She never shared her fear of losing this life with anyone. They wouldn’t understand. They would think she was being dramatic. She was after all a grown up; and there are loads of real worse things happening to people all the time, she understood that. And who knows, maybe she would get more chances to swim in future.
But Kuppy knew deep inside, she wouldn’t. It would never be the same. It was difficult to explain why she felt so distraught, she was almost losing control of her nerves. ‘They should blow the whistle now’, Kuppy had thought as she was preparing to dive from that cemented porch. The last thing she wanted was to be unable to hold all her potential energy and dive early only to be disqualified. It was important for her to win this competition, very important. Not because she wanted to be proved the best; but because she would never again get the opportunity to feel so alive, so powerful, so fierce.
So when Kuppy heard the whistle and dived, the beast in her took over. The beast who defies the laws of love and lust, uses hatred as a weapon of success, rummages the lines between life and death. She was sure she would die if she didn’t win, perhaps from a cardiac arrest. All the fear and numbness was gone now, a high sense of desperation and recklessness filled her up instead. She let out a scared sob under water and a few bubbles floated out in place of a human sound. Her hands were cycling in their own accord out of her control, as she kept kicking the water ferociously. Four strokes, one breath; alternately to the left and right. Kuppy didn’t even think of her lessons today, it came out as an automated process. One of the other best things she learned was ‘Never try to check how far your competitors are’ – that always came in handy. It made Kuppy feel less nervous, gave her the scope to focus on herself and the finishing line, and of course never slowed her down.
Every now and then when she slid her head to catch a breath, the cheers on land abruptly grew loud; and then it got muffled again. Kuppy was used to this for years. It made her feel good, feel like a queen mermaid, spectacular and powerful. From a very young age Kuppy was fast with her strokes, and that developed from kiddish reasons. She had seen cartoons and movies of multi-headed snakes, extra long snakes, sharks and crocodiles, and even horned sea monsters. She believed everything she saw back then, but she knew those were creatures from a different place dealing with a different type of people.
However, the fear developed when she started seeing tiny white lights below popping and flashing in the pond she first learned swimming; and she can swear she once saw a long thick dark something coiled on the floor pond. The water was not clear, it was green and hazy, but those haven’t been hallucinations. Every time she swam from the end of the pond where her mother wasn’t sitting to watch her swim, she could sense the scary creature chasing her. Kuppy swam for her life back then, every time. She was scared like hell, and way too fast for anyone to figure out how she would do it. Once in a while Kuppy still feels that water creature chasing her, but now she knows it won’t harm her (if it did exist). It never did in all these years. She had proved herself to be the queen of their kingdom, they just liked seeing her being fierce.
Today she was about to lose her kingdom, she had to show her power to her subjects for one last time.
Kuppy looked in front this time she popped her head up, not sideways. The finishing line was not far, and she had a momentary triumphant feeling of being ahead of her competitors, although she never bothered to check them out. The final lap was here. The final lap of her life, her life which would be void of a great part of herself after this.
L.I.F.E. A small four lettered word, how complex could that be. Poets and authors and teachers and friends have explained life innumerable times. Life is hard; life sucks; life is good; life is not a bed of roses; life is unpredictable; life is a constant change… not one has really defined life. Kuppy didn’t think life had a proper definition, it is unfair to even try to limit the meaning of life in words. The reality of life had hit her hard a few times before, it hits everyone. Was this not the perfect thing to reflect on when trying to win the final competition?
Her hand hit the wall, and she accidentally swallowed a bit of pond water when that happened. She hadn’t realized the swim was over. Kuppy looked up to see a blurry man standing just above where she was, holding up a timer in one hand and a placard in the other; she couldn’t read the placard from there. It happened so sudden that she felt a bit baffled when she saw none of the other swimmers around. She heard the cheer of the audience, the whistle blowing, the competitors’ arms giving the last flaps as they touched the wall one after another. It was then that she cried. She couldn’t help it, and they weren’t happy tears. She wanted to be mentally and physically present for her last stroke, and she hadn’t. And now that moment was gone forever. She would never feel her last stroke.
Her mother, supportive as always, beamed at her prize when Kuppy got one an hour later. The water was still by then, a silent respectable adult. Kuppy had got hold of her emotions, a smile pasted on her face, a grim control spreading in her. How do you lose something that never belonged to you? That life was already a part of another world, something to be seen, not touched; a bit unreal almost.
That day Kuppy grew up a bit more. Once again she struggled to accept a loss, and survived. Just like everyone else does with a lot of losses every day. It is only a tiny part of that big complex thing called ‘Life’.
