Did you know we also row? Well...almost!

Rowing round and round in the Munnar reservoir!, originally uploaded by Asha Mokashi.

That was the subject of the mail I sent to Martin Schwartz on 4 Jan 2002. Find out why!!

Hi Martin !
A different kind of mail for a change ! Did you know that you have competition building up for the next World Rowing Championship ? See the pics attached. The SAS team put up a great show of rowing during the Munnar trip last month - during which someone or other kept on saying " Martin should see us now" - well, the tone changed a bit later, you will understand why - read on if you have the time now and have nothing against beginning the day laughing....!

The scene of action was a huge scenic reservoir at the biggest arc dam in Asia, so they said - on the Kerala border, in the Munnar mountains. Kabilan, Sri and Chandra went off in one boat, with Kabs and Sri rowing and Chandra praying for dear life (so I think !). In our boat there was Vimal and Surya rowing , with Niteen and Partha taking turns, and me the petrified Navigator - to be on the safe side I sat on the floor of the boat, since anywhere else seemed dangerously unstable.

We had successfully managed to row ourselves (or was it thanks to the wind? ) to the center of the lake - and were having fun watching Kabilan and Sri take the boat almost right into the dam sluice gates. We decided that Kabs was doing an in-depth mathematical, metaphysical, and mystical study on the dimensions and architectural geometry of the dam (whatever that means) since they were not showing any sign of moving away from the dam walls.
We felt really good about ourselves and unanimously agreed that "Martin should have seen us now".

After some time we decided that we need to go forward, sideways or somewhere. And then started the drama - whatever we did, we kept on going round and round in circles, full 360 degree turns! All 4 of the rowers took turns, with me (and everyone) shouting instructions:

" Niteen, you stop !, Vimal, you row ! - hey Niteen, you don't row, let us turn first ! let the other 2 try !, Surya, you are rocking the boat !, Partha, don't dip the oars too much !, eeks, the oars might fall into the water, then we're finished ! , remember, none of us can swim !, you are using too much force!, hey, both of you try rowing together, start, 1,2,3.................................stop ! oh God, we are still in the same place !"

That was the time we thought of you again, but in a different way - "If Martin was here, he would have shown us how to row this thing ".

We even discussed the photos of you rowing somewhere in Germany , was it - which we had seen long back - to remember how you people were holding the oars.

This went on for quite some time, with no signs of us having moved an inch - all that was happening was that we were seeing the surrounding scenery from different angles. By that time, it looked like we were going to spend the rest of our lives in the boat right in the center of a scenic lake. We had only 30 minutes of boating time, which we did not want to end up as Just Floating time. The cold wind also became stronger- and wasn't in our favor - I could imagine us slowly moving right into the dam - eeks.

Suddenly solid unmoving land seemed very attractive, and I said that it would be a good idea to go back. No one protested - and soon with continued shouting and non-stop instructions, we slowly learnt the art of rowing to a direction we wanted to go, not where the wind wanted to take us, and managed to reach the shore - Wow ! that was some relief - I went and sat down on a bench and told myself that deep waters were most beautiful from afar.

On our way back, we crossed Kabs and team who, having got over their intense fascination with the dam walls, had decided to see a little bit of the lake too. Apparently there were 2 styles of rowing happening in there - with Kabs and Sri having different ideas on how the oars should be placed - Kabs did not fail to stress the point that he had learnt all about rowing from you. The fact that the class was not in a boat, but on the rowing machine at office did not, of course, make the lessons any less relevant!

All of us land finally with everyone alive and well, and then the boat man informs us that the dam sluice gates were actually open, but he did not want to scare Kabs and co!

Now that we were on solid earth again, we spoke at length of the boat with all 3 of them coming out from the other side of the dam all flattened out like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon - a picture we found wildly amusing ! Kabs confessed that he got into the same boat with Sri since she claimed to have done rowing before - afterwards she mentioned that it was way back in childhood, a vague memory !

All this while, the other 4 (Reddy and Venkat, Sankar and Lekha) had taken pedal boats, so they kept moving around effortlessly going to far ends of the lake, without any clue of the action-packed drama going on with the rest of the team.

After all this we watched another group of tourists stuck in the center of the lake going round and round, and we laughed and said "Hey, they don't even know how to row and they go into the lake ....ha ha " !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, well, well ! There's no perspective like the retrospective !

To which Martin replied:

Hi Asha,

Thanks for the pix and the vivid description- I can see the whole scene in mind right now and am definitely chuckling. I do think there is some potential in a few of the team members, but only after they get put through a couple of months of rigorous training...:). Perhaps on my next trip we can head over to Ulsoor lake and commandeer some sort of water craft.

Thanks again,
Martin

Okay, fellow-rowers, if you have any other version of the story, go ahead, post comments!!