Beetles

Artwork by Yadhu Krishna

She lay at the bottom of the pool, forcefully holding herself back from floating to the surface by firmly gripping one of the pool ladders. She could hear the dull thrum of heavy monsoon drops assaulting the surface of the pool, invading her bones with a cold, sweet chill that at once both excited and terrified her. Rain is not pitter-patter. It is a large grumpy ceiling fan switched on in the sky, bringing the beautiful grey skies with it.

 And so she acknowledged the water hammering at the surface, hitting it with such force that each drop burst apart in every direction before forming a dent and a ripple. It was a comforting constant- that muted sound of millions of dents-and-ripples forming and never ceasing.

Ironically, when rain was bearing down on a pool fifteen feet deep and she was at the bottom of it, she could breathe. She looked at the palm of her free hand, observing the white wrinkles that had formed on her fingers.

When the pool was in this season, you could reach out with your hand in any direction in the water and you might touch something small and frail. They could very possibly be beetles. Then you would recoil and turn to see that it was just some small piece of broken twig or leaf doing a quiet waltz in suspension. You could choose to spend hours combing the pool in every direction to pick the dried leaves at its bottom and make a little treasure of them at one of the diving points at the pool end. You could make a little science of the dried and desiccated leaves, and also the still fresh and green ones.

She pushed herself off the floor and broke water. Immediately the cacophony surrounded her again. It was sunny now and the rain had stopped. Children and their mothers were screaming at one end of the pool. There was laughter and there was scared flustering that sent chlorinated water into everyone’s eyes. There was unabashed staring when someone accidentally came up with the neckline of their full-body swimsuit a little low, and there was also the uncomfortable adjusting of it once the gaze of the men from the top roof of the adjoining complex was recognized.

In this season, you would find beetles in the pools. They mostly occupied the ends of the pool, but you could also find the occasional beetle on the floor at the halfway mark. You could never tell if a beetle was dead or alive until you got in close vicinity. If you did and it was alive, you would note that it looked like no beetle you had ever seen before- blue-black, uncharacteristically thin, and possessing long protrusions along its sides that helped it move in the water. You would note that in its movements it looked positively dangerous, and a very primal instinct would tell you to get away as fast as possible. You would feel that if you were to touch it, it would feel as hard as a clam shell right before it dug its razor-sharp pincers into you.

They thrived in the monsoon. Of course, no one really knew if they were dangerous but that didn’t matter. One look at them and she would feel like she was being scratched at from the inside.

So that was why she always hesitated to swim to the more populated end of the pool. What if you touched one of those? What if you caught some infection? The women in the pool would look at her with some interest, some quizzically, as though they could not make out what she was about. But they always seemed so comfortable with their good-natured curiosity.

The other end of the pool was lonely, populated occasionally by a ray of sunlight or an energetic twelve year old in the middle of her laps. There were beetles there too. So she rarely visited either of these ends and mostly stuck to the halfway point, where she saw a few children play and wave to their mothers at the end. They were interested in what she could do, too, which was mainly staying in the same spot but diving down deep and doing a few twirls and rolls. She never really swam full laps. Maybe she should do it more often.

She saw one of the mothers looking at her and smiling.

As she tried to go back down to the floor, she noticed something and immediately drew back. There was a beetle on the floor. It hadn’t been there a second before.

She imagined it flagellating upward towards her. She knew it would touch her. That was inevitable. Maybe it would meet at her thighs or go into her swimsuit through the back.

No, that wouldn’t do. She abruptly hoisted herself up the ladder, brushed off the water clinging to her suit, and left for the changing room.

She couldn’t swim there anymore.

There were beetles in the water.