Minutes before getting dropped off mid-ocean at Kovalam (Covelong) for our first open water swimming lesson, Murthy Megavan, the founder of Murthy Surf School, tells me that I am to strap on my life jacket and wait at a spot 100 metres from the shore, marked only by random bobbing waves.
“Just relax and talk to Syed,” he says, asking one of his instructors lounging on a surfboard, to accompany me.
So I follow instructions, speaking to Syed about job losses, the post-COVID economy, and why I chose to do journalism, somewhere around 20-feet above the ocean bed. I am feigning calm. There is a light drizzle. But the sun is getting rid of the lack-lustre grey clouds that enveloped the sky earlier that morning, threatening to cancel my lesson.
