On the Outside Looking Indian

by Rupinder Gill

  I changed like I was Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, surreptitiously hiding from the other women. Under my dress, I pulled off the underwear and pulled on the bathing suit. A towel quickly wrapped itself around my lower half. Then the dress came off while the bathing suit simultaneously went on in its place. And with that, I headed to the showers. My swim cap looked like a latex hairnet, lumpily pulling together my mane, parts of which still peeked out of the sides. After a mandatory shower, I headed out into the unknown, the strange land called the swimming pool. The lady in the lesson before mine was just finishing up when I arrived. She patted herself dry and I announced, “I’m up next. I’m learning to swim, too.” She smiled and wished me well, a slight British accent in her voice.

  “Are you Rupinder?” Freddie asked from the pool. His bright yellow swim cap gave him the appearance of an aquatic Chiquita Banana.

  I nodded and moved forward. Throwing my towel onto a bench, I eased myself cautiously down the stairs into the tepid water.

  He shook my hand and I thrust my goggles into his palm. “How do I put these on?” I asked. Freddie was likely a decade younger than I was, but because he could swim, he was my poolside Yoda.

  He took the goggles from my hand, and while I held them over my eyes, he struggled to secure them in place.

  “Wow, you have a lot of hair under there,” he said while stretching the rubber strap as far as the laws of physics would allow.

  I sure hoped he was talking about my swim cap.

  “How’s that?” he asked while snapping it in place.

  “It feels quite tight,” I admitted. My eyes felt as if they were squished into an ophthalmological girdle, but Freddie assured me that this would work for the time being.

  “Okay,” he announced. “Why don’t you show me what you can do.”

  I looked at the water, adjusted my foot position slightly, put my arms out a little farther in front of me, then rotated them clockwise to create a minuscule ripple in the water. Putting them back at my sides, I shrugged. “Well, I think that’s the extent of it.” We both laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “We’ll take this slow.”

  For the first ten minutes, we practiced simply walking in the water, submerged to shoulder level. Like chlorine-addicted zombies, we walked with our arms outstretched back and forth, back and forth, half the length of a lane. Even this was proving to be an Olympic-level challenge for me. After five steps, I would feel myself swerving toward the wall, the sixth step forcing me to careen into it. After my path straightened out, Freddie said something alarming. We were going to now put our faces in the water.

  Hold your water horses. I did not sign up for this. I didn’t sign up to lose my oxygen and gain a panic attack in the closed swimming-pool lane of the West Village Y. I know it sounds cowardly, but adults are cowards. Seven-year-olds are not afraid of swimming. They haven’t seen The Poseidon Adventure and other disaster-at-sea films, so are not yet aware that water submersion and breathing are the oil and water of the survival world. I had nightmares for weeks after watching Titanic, though in fairness, some of that was due to Billy Zane’s eyebrows. Kids think that like their age-appropriate frame of reference, the heroine of The Little Mermaid, they can survive underwater indefinitely and sing songs of merriment with creatures of the sea.

  “Walk five steps and take a deep breath and put your whole head in,” Freddie instructed.

  He wasn’t going to let me off the hook. Okay, I said silently. Easy does it. You can do this. I walked five steps, looked over at him, then walked another two, followed by another one before I gulped in a copious amount of oxygen and plunged my head beneath the depths.

  “Great!” Freddie said as I emerged one nanosecond later. “But I should tell you that you don’t need to close your eyes under there if you’re wearing goggles.”

  I was already learning so much.

  After another fifteen minutes of doing five steps then submersion, I was keeping my eyes open but was still concerned about the water that would fill my nose and mouth at any given moment. Freddie’s attempts at teaching me to exhale underwater resulted simply in my exiting the water each time I needed a fresh breath. “You need to stay down there longer,” Freddie cautioned. “Hold your breath as long as you can.”

  That was exactly what I was doing. Take a breath, go underwater, count to three, and come back up. Three seconds seemed reasonable to me. There wasn’t a coral reef, or a sneak preview of the newest Scorsese film down there. What was I staying down there to see?

  “Now hold your breath, go under, and float as long as you can,” Freddie said, upping the ante. “Exhale underwater. I want to see some bubbles.”

  “How long are these lessons?” I asked, looking at the clock. I knew perfectly well that they were a half hour, and knowing that we had mutually decided on an end was making it easier for me.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Freddie said. “I’m happy to keep going.” Damn him for being interested in my personal growth.

  I had wasted a lot of time both in the pool and in life. It was my method of stalling so I didn’t have to commit to anything too deeply. But if Freddie could be committed to ensuring that a perfect stranger learned to swim, I needed to honor my commitment to the task myself.

  “Oh, thanks,” I said, adjusting my goggles. “That’s great.”

  “Sure,” Freddie said. “Now go ahead and float.”

  Okay, deep breath. I was going to go for it. I pulled in a breath so big it could have ripped Dorothy’s house from the Kansas soil and I plunged my head underwater. Then I floated. Then I kicked a bit. My God, was I swimming? I think I was swimming! I wouldn’t be racing Michael Phelps anytime soon but I was now at least a contender.

  Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles. Hold on a bit longer. Keep going. Now stand up. Mission accomplished.

  “I’m proud of you!” Freddie proclaimed when I touched the wall. “You did it!”

  I did it! How truly insane that I thought I would live my life without ever doing something so simple, so rudimentary. Before this year, being a nonswimmer was just my reality. I was convinced that I was never going to learn to swim. My mom couldn’t swim and would likely never learn. I couldn’t think of one single female relative over thirty who could swim. My sisters couldn’t swim either, although I hoped that they would one day also give it a try. If we capsized on a family boat cruise tomorrow, my dad and brother would have to exhaust themselves in the rescue effort while we flailed around the water.

  Afterward, I truly felt I had accomplished something. Freddie shook my hand at the end of the lesson and reiterated how proud he was of me. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but the nonswimmers out there know the crippling fears and emotions that are keeping them out of the water. Swimming frightened me more than bungee jumping, skydiving, and bullfighting all wrapped into one. So to me, it was a big deal. No, it was an enormous deal.

  In the locker room, a glimpse in the mirror revealed deep-set rings around my eyes, caused by the suction of my goggles. I tried to rub them out and pinch the skin back to its regular plumpness. The sauna was right behind me, so I decided to wait out the recovery in the soothing heat.

  When I opened the door, I was greeted by a fully naked geriatric woman lying on a bench. Her legs were in the air, doing some sort of X-rated air bicycling. Her privates became uncomfortably public with each and every casual pedal. As if steaming herself, putting on a peep show, and doing calisthenics was not challenge enough, she also multitasked in the loofahing of her heels. Moving past her, I took a seat in the corner of the opposite bench and arranged my towels to create a perfect cushy base. I had already stripped down to a bathing suit in public, which was considered by Indian modesty standards to be a step below twirling around a stripper pole. I didn’t imagine I would ever get to the point of being able to handle full public nudity. At least not today.

  Closing my eyes, I relished the heat swirling around me. I wrung my hair out into a towel and let the warmth
pull the smell of chlorine off my skin. What a wonderful feeling. When I opened my eyes, my sauna mate was sitting up and had moved on to rubbing lotion all over her freshly toned and scrubbed body. Feeling fully refreshed, I ran my fingers around my eyes and noticed that the dents had subsided considerably, so I was ready to join the general public again.

  After I showered and changed, I wandered out into the hallway. Through the glass from the pool lobby, I spotted a group of kindergarten-age kids on the pool deck ready for their lessons. They all wore tiny swim caps and some had goggles already in place. Their mothers were on the benches in front of me, watching them. Some of them looked younger than me and were beautifully dressed and manicured, in the way of Manhattan women who are free at three in the afternoon. I stepped out into the September afternoon sunshine to catch my train home.

  By the second lesson you’d think that my fears would have diminished. The day before the lesson was scheduled, I tried to think of a reason to cancel. The morning of the lesson, I still had butterflies in my stomach. I picked up the phone to call Freddie and saw that the battery was dead. Fate was telling me to stop being a baby.

  When I walked down the stairs to the pool, I was fifteen minutes early, so I took a seat in the pool lobby to watch through the glass. The woman from last week was finishing up her lesson. She was already in the deep end. Dear Lord, I was not ready for that. I was not ready for that at all. How did she get so far ahead of me? I cursed myself for not practicing, but the pool near where I lived was so small and was overrun by a clique of Orthodox Jewish women who dominated the dressing room and filled the pool at maximum capacity every time I was there.

  I went and got changed, feeling a lot more comfortable with the cap, goggles, and shower routine already.

  I took a seat on a bench on the pool deck just as the woman was emerging from the water. “Wow,” I said. “You’re doing great. Which lesson are you on?”

  “The third,” she said. “I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

  Okay, she was one lesson ahead of me. In swimming terms, that was like the difference between an undergraduate degree and a PhD. I would no longer compare myself to her. She was too experienced for comparison.

  “Hi again.” Freddie waved from the pool. I folded my towel, left it on the bench, and joined him the water.

  “I think I’ve forgotten everything,” I admitted.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll start again.”

  And we did. Back to zombie walks. Then faces in water. On to gliding.

  After twenty minutes, Freddie said, “You seem to really hesitate when you’re underwater.”

  “I know,” I apologized. “I just don’t know what it is. It’s completely a mental issue.”

  “Come over to the wall,” he said. “You’re going to stand here, go under, and hold your breath for as long as possible. Let’s start with ten seconds.”

  Start with? That seemed like an eternity to me. People ran the hundred-yard dash in less time.

  Plunging my head under, I listened to Freddie’s voice coming from above the water. “Eight … nine … ten.

  “Great work!” he said as I wiped the water from my goggles. “I’m so proud of you! Now try twenty.”

  Twenty seconds. No oxygen. This was frightening. I imagined Freddie standing trial for my murder. The thought of photos of me in my bathing suit being passed around in a courtroom made me vow to conquer the challenge.

  Deep breath. Head under. Freddie’s voice beckoned from above. “Five…six…seven…” Don’t think about it. You have plenty of air. “Eleven…twelve…” More than halfway done, stay calm. “… Sixteen … nineteen…twenty.

  “You did it!” he yelled as I swallowed in every last drop of air.

  “You’d better not say ‘thirty’ now,” I said, wiping water from my goggles.

  He laughed and gave me a high five as people in the lane beside us looked on.

  “Listen,” he said. “I appreciate how willing you are. I can see that you’re scared and yet you do everything I ask.”

  “Well, thank you for being so patient,” I replied. “I’ll try to practice. I have to.”

  After showering and changing, I sat on the bench in the pool lobby for a while, watching the next set of lessons. Wow, those five-year-olds were good. With such reckless abandon they jumped into the pool, unaware of and uninterested in the depth of the water. Their parents all sat cheering them on and holding their teddy bears as they swam.

  As I watched the kids with envy, I noticed a Speedo-clad man on the pool deck walk over to the glass wall. He knocked on it and waved to catch my attention. When I looked up, he gave me a big smile and a thumbs-up. I laughed and waved back as everyone looked over at me. I guess I had some cheerleaders, too.

  After the lesson, Melissa and I met for what ended up being a media networking event at the über-cool Bedford Bowl bowling alley in Brooklyn. It was a giant complex of neon-lit lanes, flanked with rich leather sofas. At the back of the room was a giant modern bar and standing around it were dozens of people wearing name tags. “Eric, Fashion,” one read. “Louise, Fusion Design,” said the name tag of a beautiful black girl in a zebra-print dress and stiletto boots. “Oh, man,” I said to Mel. “I don’t know about the name tags.”

  “Rupinder, Tap Dancer.” “Rupinder, Unemployed.” “Rupinder, Insane.” I hated the what-do-you-do-for-a-living conversation.

  This stemmed from my struggle to get to the point of wearing the illustrious name tag of “Rupinder, TV Publicist.”

  Before that job, I worked a slew of terrible ones, freelancing and interning and doing whatever I had to on the side in hopes of landing a job in my field. During the day, I took abuse from people on the phone; I lost a permanent job to a kid who didn’t even graduate high school, entered data, and entered incredible depression. Once, after a particularly disheartening temp job where I found myself putting out drinks and sandwiches at an accounting firm, I cried on the subway ride home. It was a pleasant enough place to work. Senior staff came by to shake my hand and welcome me. But I had gone to school for five years and was putting out fruit salads for kids younger than me who had professional jobs. As subway onlookers peered over uncomfortably, I sat in my seat and cried, seeing no way out of toiling in unskilled labor forever.

  But during those days, which were financially difficult, dark, depressing, and sobering all at the same time, I never felt like I was “Rupinder, Telemarketer” or “Rupinder, Office Temp.” I couldn’t, because defining myself that way made me feel like it was going to be my reality forever.

  Besides, the North American obsession with work always struck me as overrated. But that was an argument admittedly weakened by the fact that I didn’t work at all. Which, in the crowd of movers and shakers I found myself among at the moment, would be tantamount to wearing the name tag of “Rupinder, Huge Nobody.”

  “What’s the problem?” Melissa asked, seeing the look on my face.

  “I don’t always love networking events,” I said.

  “Me neither,” she said. “Let’s just stay for ten minutes and see what we think,” she said, walking over to the bar.

  “The other thing is, what do I do, Mel?” I asked her.

  We turned down the offer of name tags and went to get some sushi.

  “You’re so hard on yourself,” she said. “You’re going to do great things.”

  Melissa was always skilled at pep talks, something I found myself needing since I landed in New York.

  “I just don’t know where my life is headed anymore,” I admitted. “And sometimes I wonder if coming to New York was a mistake. It’s cool and it’s great, but it doesn’t feel like home, and well, it’s kind of lonely.”

  In fact, my biggest shock in New York was not the Latin lovers in my neighborhood, who catcalled to me each and every time I passed, or how well the subway system retained the smell of urine each day. It was that after nearly a month, I was still lonely. In New York City, for God�
�s sake! In the city that never sleeps, I slept ten hours every night, at a loss for how to fill my day.

  “When I first moved here, I was so depressed,” Melissa confessed. “I didn’t have friends, I had nothing to do, I didn’t have my own life, and I felt like I wasn’t in control. I would sleep until noon or just make up errands to do. It took me at least four months to feel settled.”

  “But you had Ken. That must have made things tolerable. And unfortunately I don’t have that much time,” I said.

  It is one thing to be lonely but another to be lonely and poor. Having been raised to be cautious with money, I started to feel sick to my stomach at the rent I was paying, the price of a meal, the price of a grocery-store sandwich when you are trying to avoid going out for a meal, and the general cost of life. Most of my friends in the city had jobs with great salaries, and though they weren’t extravagant people, I could never help but feel like I was bringing down the fun by always saying no to meals and shopping and the things I used to enjoy once upon a time. I was starting to not enjoy anything and thus was making my experience the exact opposite of what I had set out for it to be.

  The cost of leaving a comfortable life was difficult. I always thought of myself as adventurous. On my first day at college, I was up at 7 A.M., packed and ready to head out for a new life in a new city. But here in New York, without classes to distract me or a residence full of two hundred other women I had yet to meet, I was bored. When I was eighteen, I relished the thought of university, knowing I was leaving my old life and inventing a new one for myself. Now, past thirty, I had abandoned that life on what felt like a whim.