Caught by powerful undertows, oceanic and emotional
I was healed by empathetic listening and self-forgiveness
For a girl with coastal origins, my introduction to open-water swimming happened rather late in life. A few weeks past my fortieth birthday, I cautiously navigated myself into the open water on a girls’ trip to my home state, Goa. The sea was calm at Baga that morning. It was the first time I had been on a Goa beach without any family members around. The first time I wore a two-piece swimsuit, too, and now, I was swimming in the sea!
The exhilaration of this first-time experience was heightened by the laughter and humour of friends who had been co-travellers and guides in the intense emotional and political journeys of my late 30s. After years of collaborating at protests and on projects and being part of local pressure groups on issues ranging from ecological conservation, violence against women, infrastructure and social discrimination, it felt right that we should be swimming into the sea together, a band of fierce, powerful and caring women, as brave in our fights as in sharing our vulnerabilities. Life was good. Encircled by those I trusted, I felt invincible!
But trusting my friends was not enough! This realization came to me on an impromptu trip to Bali with college friends just a few months later (yes, the sea really called to me that year!). Swimming from Seminyak beach into the sea, my confidence boosted by my college bestie’s free spirit and fantastic swimming credentials, the buoyant high of treading the open water with nary a care in the world was rudely interrupted by a strong undercurrent that was rapidly pulling me away from land.
My memory of the next few minutes is more emotional than physical. I swam towards shore with every ounce of strength I could find, my imperfect breaststroke woefully inadequate against the mighty undertow. I could sense my friend gaining ground ahead of me, her powerful strokes taking her closer to safety while I made little progress. “Don’t leave me behind! Help me!” I was shouting in my head, for the water was all around me, all-powerful, all-consuming. All was lost for a second or two, but then, miraculously, I felt my knees graze the rough sand. Shakily, with some help from the lifeguard who was reprimanding us gently, I collapsed on the beach in sheer relief.
In the ensuing years, as life moved forward, I pushed the ‘Bali episode’ into the far recesses of my mind and swam into the sea whenever I could. During COVID-19 in early 2021, I spent an idyllic week with my family in Goa’s southernmost tip, kayaking on the Talpona River and swimming in both the river and the sea.
Cut to 2024. Soaking in Goa’s torrential monsoon rain a few weeks ago, accompanied by the same aforementioned college bestie, the ‘Bali episode’ resurfaced, triggered by a walk alongside the raging monsoon sea. I spoke about those moments of sheer terror, perhaps for the first time, and was further traumatised by my friend’s reaction. “But you were never in danger!” she exclaimed, “I was right there. I know this for a fact.” It is a testament to our rock-solid friendship that we smoothly navigated the fallout of her words, words that sounded callous to me, words that seemed to invalidate my past feelings of utter fear, abandonment and failure.
In the following discussion, I realised that what I, a novice, had perceived as a terrifying near-death experience was par for the course to a regular open sea swimmer. Undertows are powerful, I learnt, but you have to learn to duck under the waves to swim through.
For many women, devastating news like the recent rape and murder of the young trainee doctor in Kolkata feels like a powerful oceanic undercurrent. Each triggering news item draws us deeper into the miasma of despair, shame and rage. This is a powerful undertow that takes us back to all our past experiences of trauma and gaslighting, of being unseen and unheard, of being ever in danger, physically and certainly mentally, as we survived a society structured around male privilege. We drown once again and fear for our emotional survival. We desperately need succour.
For me, the process of healing begins with listening without judgment. On that rain-drenched evening in Goa, the conversation between us friends took a gentler turn. “I would never have let you drown. I’m sorry this was so hard for you, and I’m sorry I did not know until now.” My friend’s gentle words and the reassuring pressure of her hand on mine wielded that rarest of magic, gently tinkering with a ‘core memory’, turning it from high heat to low, from negative to neutral, from terrifying to tolerable. I want to be able to do the same for all my friends who are feeling triggered and fragile against the onslaught of the brutal news from Kolkata (and Uttarakhand, Muzzafarpur, Gaza, London,…when will it stop?).
But vital as it is for us to tell our stories and draw strength from each other, there’s more work to be done. To swim back to safe shores, it isn’t enough for us to fight harder and stronger; we need to fight smarter, too! We need to dig in deeper, question our underlying assumptions, educate ourselves and our communities (men included), and learn to subvert the system from within. To swim under the waves, so to speak.
As my friend’s healing words and gestures washed over me that evening, another magical shift happened. I saw myself with kinder eyes and forgave myself the fear and shame from the past, as we must all do for all those past traumas that were never our fault.
This essay was part fear, part encouraging and had such intense emotions attached with it. Could feel the undercurrents of the sea and the goosebumps. Wonderful essay 👍
How well you made the connections- and the all girls trips sound so good. Congratulations on your 52 posts, look forward to more.