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All at Sea on the Palk Strait
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Without the crucial equipment, what would have been a memorable swim ended as an agonising flop, says STAN RAYAN.
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YOU COULD see the pain and exhaustion on their faces as they hung on desperately to the boat. There was a lot of disappointment too, for it marked the end of a brave attempt by Kerala's S. P. Muralidharan and former international Wilson Cherian to cross the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka.
It was an emotional moment and it pained one to watch the two seasoned swimmers, one a long-distance specialist and the other a former international, resign to the unpredictable sea.
More than anything, it was the agony that their effort would have been successful had all the pre-event technical homework been done to perfection. True, amateur handling of the swim messed up their heroic effort.
For starters, even two days before the expedition, the two thought that the stretch from Talaimannar in Sri Lanka to Dhanushkodi in India - the narrowest strip of sea between the two countries - was just around 19 kms. To their shock, it turned out to be 19 nautical miles, roughly about 35 kms!
And the trip was arranged without even some of the basic equipment that was crucial for such an effort. Things like the Global Positioning System (GPS), compass, life jackets, lifebuoys and binoculars, were all missing.
"How can you start such a trip without the GPS and the other things which are supposed to show you the way," said Krishnan, an Indian Coast Guard official, who made a brief visit to the rusty and rickety old boat which carried the three-member media team and the co-ordinator for the event, Sanjeev Kumar from the Elite Xtreme Sports Club.
And the boat, which was supposed to guide them, often went round and round, literally tying up Wilson and Muralidharan in knots.
"I felt like a dog running in circles chasing its own tail," said the 40-year-old Arjuna Awardee Wilson who was the `backstroke' king in the country for 13 years, in the eighties and early nineties.
Wilson went to Sri Lanka as Muralidharan's coach but after accompanying his `trainee' on warm-up swims off the Desaille Beach in Colombo, he decided to try the Palk Strait, just a day before the event. And he was quite impressive too, often gaining big leads over Murali.
"We were very keen about Wilson accompanying Murali. We thought at least one would make it," said Sanjeev, who had done the spade work to get the clearance from the Indian Sports, Defence and External Affairs Ministries over the last six months.
But while all the `clearance' work on land, in both India and Sri Lanka, was done efficiently, the swimmers and the team were all at sea on the Palk Strait, frequently losing their way and swimming a lot of extra miles.
Shortage of solid food on the accompanying boats also left the men who were supposed to pilot the swimmers clearly demoralised. The empty stomachs could be one reason for the unsuccessful swim for the `pilot boat' frequently went on surprising runs into the sea, leaving the two swimmers way behind, and quite confused too.
And even after swimming nearly 40 kms, five kms more than the scheduled distance, Dhanushkodi (the finishing point) remained elusive all day, torturing and tormenting the swimmers.
"The longer we swam, the further Dhanushkodi appeared to go. That was sheer mental torture for we were swimming against heavy currents, opposing winds and waves. And the sea too turned very choppy midway through the trip," said Wilson who looked very impressive on his maiden long-distance sea swim.
And when the two gave it all up, after swimming for nearly ten hard hours, the Indian Coast Guard official told them that Dhanushkodi was still 10 kms away!
Wilson and Murali made the rest of the way by boat but decided to swim the last kilometre, for some consolation and of course, for personal satisfaction.
But this misled the cameramen from a few television channels who had come from Rameswaram to cover the finishing action. .
That evening, a few channels showed the clipping, with the misleading news that the two had achieved the feat.
The Elite Xtreme Sports Club, a part of the Thrissur-based food major Elite Group, which organised the swim as its maiden effort, is a new club which hopes to promote adventure sports. The cause too, of promoting the swimmers in their `Strait' effort, was good.
But beginnings are tough. The lessons from Palk Strait should go a long way in strengthening the foundations of the new club.
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