Growing up in a beach town, walking barefoot on the sand and looking at the vastness of the ocean was a common occurrence. The occasional picnics, when friends of the family visit and we get to play in the water, were always fun. As I grew up, whichever city I lived in, if it wasn’t a sea-side town, I always felt something was missing.
When I signed off from my last role at a large corporate firm living in a city with no beach, I wanted to do something fun and something ‘water’. While being around water was not new to me, but ‘in’ the water seemed like something I should try, so I signed up for an open water diving course – where we put on a mask and tank, jump in the ocean, go look at life under water and be merry. While (pool) swimming has been part of my life from when I was a kid (thanks to my parents and their labour of taking me to the pool every day for swim lessons that summer and many summers after that), after, being in the ocean is a whole different experience. My instructor still jokes about this – when we went out for my first dive and we jumped off the boat, I latched onto him for dear life – to be specific, held onto his neck tightly with both my arms. Guess you’re picturing that now, and as you can imagine, I had done way worse than Hrithik in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. But once we went under the surface, it was amazing. Diving has opened up a whole new world! But wait, what I didn’t see coming was the next big one. The place I went diving, also had this other sport called kitesurfing (/kiteboarding). I had just learnt of it and it looked quite interesting, the colourful kites with the backdrop of the ocean horizon. So of course, I signed up for that for my next visit.
In kitesurfing, you attach yourself to a kite, slip a board on your feet and use the power of the wind to move on the surface of the water. These are different from our Pongal kites. Oh it didn’t come easy, and it took me a long time to get the hang of it.