Creatures That Crawl

TIMES were when pools were water bodies rather than watering holes. Places you went to not so much to exhibit as to exercise. Sure there was che che quotient. Ye Olde Defense Services Clubs, the bridge-players-conclave variety of genteel, charmed circle clubs peopled by the pipesmoking "Uncle Andy's" and chic-coiffed, french chiffon and pearl-clad, cigarette holder-wielding "Aunty Pam's" was where you always wanted to be. Nobody one knew, for instance, was breaking doors to get into Municipal or Railway Club pools sans filters or the minimal maintenance and hygiene one felt was mandatory in the water one sometimes swallowed, other times plain wallowed in. And chances were the girls would always be better looking at the Gymkhana rather than the Ghatside pools. No value judgement there but just an instinct followed and often validated. For the rest, young and old alike were content to gambol in clean water, have some clean good fun. Like we said, those were different days: when water bodies were not watering holes.

No longer. Pools are more like social cesspools today. Obscene places of confluence where oil slicks and affluent effluents, yahoos and yokels, of all persuasions, compositions, complexions converge. Where Johnnys-come-lately (as in yesterday/ day before/last week!) congregate to live through their five-star fantasies of The Good Life. Fantasies they saw their childhood idols—blond-bewigged Ajits, beehive bouffanted Padma Khannas, sneering Prem Cho-pras and Buxom Bindus—enact in Bollywood celluloid sagas. How they ached then to be That-Bond-In-The-Blue Waters who slinkily swam to the edge of the pool to nibble at the hors d'oeuvre, sip at canned beer, speak into the sleek cordless, swim next to the hourglass figurewali with the bluer-than-the-blue-water contact lenses...

They're no longer yearning. They're living it through now. In upmarket suburban five-star pools across the country: at Claridges, at Hyaaaaat (when will the Delhiite get this one right!), at Maurya, Taj, the toffee-nosed Gymkhanas the Fantasy Brigade is on the roll. Those that can't crash in at hotels are flocking in droves to the municipal ponds, the Country Clubs, the Siri Forts, the Talkatoras... Eating, swilling, leching, swearing, spitting, blowing, blustering, hand-pumping, card-exchanging, name-dropping, brand-flashing, body-baring, kabab-chewing, prissy-preening by and in the pool. Doing everything in short except swimming!

Pools are the new status thing. In them good old days you flashed plastic: Diner, Visa, Visa Gold, American Express. Yesterday's yuppie passions like the zardozi threads, the flashy restaurant, the fancy car...they were all too easy to possess, to procure, to enjoy. The Great Outdoors beckons now. Through glossy seductive television images of The Body Beautiful. That outdoor is way too far. Closer home are the pools. Which is where the athletic arrivistes flock. No longer cars, women or vehicles. Today's flashers wave the Blueblood Bluewater Card from the Oberoi, the Maurya, the Leela Penta, the Golf Club at you. The Bold and the Beautiful told the Indian yuppie what to wear. Bayw-atch tells him where to acquire the body to wear them wares.

Where, not whether, you swim is of the essence. Armed with Rs 20-30-40-50,000 gate passes to Blue Nirvana the Me-Too's are crashing through the social barrier. You have to see them do the Silly Street Strut at the five-star poolside. The swagger deceives, the speech reveals them to be the Questing Quixotes they are. New Wealth is theirs to own. New Wisdom, though, is a trifle more difficult-to-access commodity.Give them full marks though, for, however clumsily, trying. In stray poolside conversations that waft across the waters you hear intimations of a new quest, a timorous, tentative, though unwittingly hilarious venturing into new horizons that are not about money alone but metaphysics. Take this: two pontoon-stummicked, gold ropechain-clad, hirsutism-affected wholesalers, five-star hotel pool members conversing. Quoth Potbelly One to Potbelly Two: "Aaajkal te loki bada karde ne. Reiki vagairah... Mainu pata hai. (These days people are into stuff like Reiki.)" PB Two, sharply, triumphantly interjects: "Reiki naheen. Onu Rake- I kehndey ne. Mera puttar janda si (Not Reiki, it's called Rake-I. My son used to learn it)." At which point PB One decides to lapse into sullen upstaged silence. Soon enough though, genuinely troubled, he comes up with a query closer to his heart "Tell me. Ai jedey Rake-I karde ne o loki sax (read sex!) nahin kardey? (Do those who indulge in Rake-I abstain from sex?)" No prizes for guessing where and how that conversation ended.

SOME seek to impress with New Age Wisdom. Others with plain New Found Money. Pools are the new fashion ramps where Speedo acolytes are upstaged by the Burton swimwearwalas, the Shahnaz sunscreen faithfuls by Body Shop and Clarins sun screen fans, the Car-tier glasses by the Armani sunshades. This is where Cover Girl Marathon Waterproof Mascara looks daggers at its Lancome equivalent in true "bhala iska mascara mere mascara se mazboot kaise (how is her mascara stronger than mine?)" style.

Not money alone. Attitude is the anthem at the Pool today. That desperate quest for attitude, though, CAN misfire once too often. Bravado may lead the bathing beauty to the Dare Bare Bikini but conditioning sends her scurrying back to the Modesty Closet. Common sight at most pools today: blushing Maiden undulates to the very edge of the pool swathed in turkish towels that would cover two size-10 Egyptian mummies adequately. Next, in gentle fast forward motion, she discards towels in perfect sync with her slithering descent into the waters. Bye Bye Baywatch. Hello Borivli!

Attitude! It leads people to do the strangest things. Don the weirdest garb. Witness the lycra sheaths for cyclists that spindly matrons bravely struggle into for their jaunt to the pool. Some wear tents, others self-styled frocks masquerading as swimsuits. It's easy to chuckle. What's important to realise is the gearshift these culturally conditioned-to-be-body-shy women make. Wearing that tent/lycra sheath and leaping into the waters is a leap of faith that covers in a trice the mental distance between Connaught Place and California.

That Attitude thing can misfire. Take this story of the poolside braggart and the poolmate who called his bluff: told by a multinational executive. Our local businessman at a suburban Bombay five-star hotel pool was seeking to impress by loudly boasting about his Hamburg office. "It's in Munnelmansberg. On Ittnstrasse. A prominent business area, you know," he ranted, revelling in what turned out to be, in fact, negative attention. A German guest swam up to the business associate the loudmouth had targeted and told him: "I want you to know the office he's talking of is located in the seediest area of Hamburg. I wouldn't go there for free lest it make a bad impression on my associates!" Bluff called, bluster backfiring, tail between legs, the sheepish trader couldn't slink out early enough!

Whatever happened to the good old pools where you went for clean water, healthy exercise? Where the competition was about the number of laps you swam, the timing, the strokes you executed perfectly? They're gone: relics of a gentler, less brassy time. Today, pools are places you go to to eat kebabs, swill beer, flash latest diamond, cell phone, knickknack and nakhra! And only occasionally, if ever, to swim.

With Archana Jahagirdar