The Hindu (Thiruvananthapuram)
To save lives, swimming coach trains over 10,000 in 15 years
Saji Valasseril’s camp oers swimming lessons in the Periyar at Aluva from November to May. Participants, mainly students, are charged a paltry monthly fee of ₹100, which is used to meet safety expenses, including deployment of an ambulance, country boats
An expansive bathing ghat at Desham, near the famed Aluva Manappuram in Ernakulam district, has been reverberating with the hubbub of a swimming camp for seven months in a year without fail for the past one-and-a-half decades.
Behind the camp is Saji Valasseril, 59, who has been giving swimming lessons to people of all age groups, driven by the motto that drowning should never cut short a precious life. The camp, run between November and May, has witnessed a record turnout of 2,500 applicants, more than half of which are schoolchildren, during this summer.
“We conducted a one-day awareness campaign on swimming in 110 schools across the Aluva education district earlier this year, reaching out to about 60,000 students. The impact of the campaign has reected in the high number of applicants this year,” says Mr. Valasseril.
In the past 15 years, the camp has taught swimming to 10,300 people.
The training starts at 5.10 a.m. every day.
“Usually, it takes 16 days for a person aged between 12 and 30 years to learn swimming. But those looking to swim across the Periyar will have to train for at least 50 days. So far, 147 persons have achieved it this year. Many of my students saved lives during the 2018 deluge,” says Mr. Valasseril.
Five-point syllabus
The training is conducted based on a ve-point syllabus. It starts with oating, kicking, swimming with head immersed in water, mastering breathing and then swimming with the head lifting o¥ the water in regular intervals to breath in.
“But the most important lesson is to stay aoat on the surface of water for hours without movement by padding legs and hands. This helps in situations like boat capsize in the middle of a large waterbody,” says Mr. Valasseril.
Participants are charged a paltry monthly fee of ₹100, which is used to meet the expenses of ensuring safety, including the deployment of a fully-equipped ambulance and two country boats with a watcher each for lookout.
Mr. Valasseril, who is into furniture business, learned swimming at a very young age, thanks to his father who was an expert swimmer and a soldier attached to the Madras Regiment.
One of his prized possessions is a trophy won by his father during a competition organised by the regiment in 1946.