Strait shooter
The 13-year-old swimmer was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age 2. At the local park, she faced taunts from adults and children, so her parents sought refuge at a swimming pool. Now, Jiya has set a new world record for fastest swim across the P
Standing on the jetty at Talaimannar in Sri Lanka, Madan Rai gazed at the expanse of the Indian Ocean. It was a cloudy night and the sea was choppy. A wind was picking up. A sailor with the Indian Navy, Rai knew that low tide was in a few hours. On a boat nearby, the 2 am alarm buzzed and woke his daughter Jiya Rai. She planned to begin her swim at 3.30 am.
Open-sea swimming is a test of human endurance, and demands a favourable alignment of factors: wind, currents, tides.
In recent years, Jiya, 13, had defied autism to secure a clutch of remarkable records. That day, her goal was to swim across the Palk Strait, from Talaimannar to Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu, and break a record that had stood since 2004.
Bula Chowdhary set that world record for best time by a woman swimmer, 13 hours and 52 minutes. By the time Jiya was done, on the afternoon of March 20, the new record was 13 hours and 10 minutes. But at 2 am, that was still in the future.
At 2 am, Rai was still warily watching the sea. He knew that the longer they waited for the wind to dip, the longer his daughter would end up swimming under a harsh sun.
“Open-water swimmers are used to such delays,” says Chowdhary, a multiple national-record holder. “That is where your mental strength comes in. You have to tell yourself that you’re good enough to swim anywhere, anytime.”
Jiya wasn’t even looking at the sea. She began her stretching exercises, ate a couple of apples, drank a litre of water. At 4.22 am, she dove into the Indian Ocean.
A swimmer is typically accompanied by a few boats. Food and fluids are provided at regular intervals. Still, you are essentially alone, Chowdhary says. “Have you ever been in the middle of nothingness at night? That’s how the sea feels at dark.”
N aval officer Madan Rai and teacher Rachana Rai of Varanasi married in 2003. Jiya, their first child, was born on May 10, 2008. (Their second, Vaibhav Rai, was born two years later.)
The Rais first noticed that something was different when, at 15 months, Jiya was still not speaking. A doctor suggested they “spend more time” with her.
At Jiya’s second birthday party, the Rais knew that wasn’t it. Jiya showed no interest in her cake and gifts. She kept trying to get away, retreating to a vacant room.
Another doctor diagnosed autism spectrum disorder. “We came home, switched on the computer, and looked it up. We were dumbfounded,” says Madan, 41.
The parents began to research the condition online. With Jiya, they began working with a paediatrician on speech and occupational therapies. They realised Jiya could learn, even if it did take her much longer, Madan says. They were hopeful.
But outside the home, there were other problems to face. At the neighbourhood park, there were cruel remarks from adults and children.
“Either Jiya was made fun of or not spoken to at all. Some parents called her ‘pagal’ (deranged),” Madan says.
Wounded, the family stopped going to the park. They discovered a local swimming pool that very few children frequented. Jiya was only two, but she instantly loved it, Madan says. “There was a visible change in her body language in the pool,” he says. “She appeared happy and had lots of energy. It was a real task to get her out!”
At 6, Jiya began school. She didn’t have any friends, her mother says. Other children would make fun of her.
Rachana quit her job to enlist as Jiya’s shadow teacher. Then the little girl won two inter-class swimming medals and entered her classroom to a standing ovation. “She’d found respect and recognition. We knew her happiness lay in water,” Madan says.
Jiya began to spend more time training, and was now winning over and over. “At first, she couldn’t tell if she had won or lost,” says Rachana, 39. “Gradually, she began to understand that trophies meant wins. Then she began flashing a victory sign after crossing the line first.”
At an inter-school competition in Mumbai later that year, seasoned coach Vidyadhar Gharat approached the Rais to say Jiya had the potential to swim for India. Her parents were thrilled. But this would be a new phase of learning for them all.
Gharat had never worked with an autistic child before, so Rachana became her daughter’s shadow swim coach too. But first, she had to learn to swim. As she did her laps, at home, Madan and Jiya studied footage of American swim legend Michael Phelps. Jiya absorbed by watching, her father says.
By 2017, Gharat was suggesting open-water swimming, and the Rais found themselves on a beach in Malvan, Maharashtra, watching their nine-year-old daughter set out on a 1-km race. She finished sixth of 200 competitors. Gharat was now convinced that she was at her best in longer races.
Rachana recalls Jiya’s happiness when she switched from the pool to the sea. “She was a kid in a candy shop. She would leap like a dolphin, and the smile never left her.”
The idea of swimming across the Palk Strait came about after Jiya swam from Mumbai’s Bandra-Worli Sea Link to Gateway, in February 2021, aged 12. “I was confident that she could break Bula’s record,” Gharat says. Jiya grinned at the mention of a new milestone.
J iya started her swim in the Palk Strait with wind and current against her. In three hours, she covered only 5 of her 28.5 km. But around 7.30 am, the winds dipped. Jiya tore across the ocean.
“Towards the end, once you see the lighthouse, you get the push. I remember being so tired that I prayed a wave or dolphin would toss me closer to the finish line,” laughs Chowdhary. The lighthouse at Dhanushkodi became visible to Jiya at around 2.10 pm. She was now in Indian waters.
The tide had begun to turn again, but it didn’t matter. The finish line was in sight.
“She pointed at the lighthouse, and then at her watch,” Rachana says. “She knew that she had won.”