Adventures at the Pond

The pond was irresistible, beckoning me every day.

Across the street from our home in Sylhet, was a police station. Next to this station ran an unpaved path which went some way past the station before curving right. Walking down this path, one unexpectedly came upon a large pond (dighi), hidden away from the street. The pond was square with sides of perhaps 500 feet. At the centre of each side was a small ghat – rudimentary stairs for people of the neighbourhood to enter the pond for bathing or swimming.

I learned to swim in this pond - at Abbu's insistence - when I was eight. For him, swimming was a non-negotiable survival skill. This was before the age of swimming instructors and lessons. Abbu recruited Torijullah Bhai, a tough choukidar, for the job, with the promise of a reward if I swam in a month. Every day I eagerly waited for Torijullah Bhai to show up so we could head to the pond. He stood waist-deep in water and held out his arms. Supporting my chest and belly on his palms, I floated. He shouted "Kick! Kick! Kick!" and I kicked the water till I was exhausted. Gradually he started to draw away his hand and I was able to stay afloat without his help. Next thing I knew, I was swimming across the pond. I had the world's worst freestyle technique, breathing face forward rather than turning my head, but when Abbu watched me swim across the pond, he was delighted.

Torijullah Bhai collected his reward and our lessons ended. In the meantime a young man was hired to work in our house. Bodi hailed from a village of Water Gypsies in Mymensingh. I was, by now, addicted to swimming so he accompanied me every day to the pond where I frolicked in the water and he squatted patiently on the bank chewing on stalks of grass.

One day Bodi jumped into the water. He swam effortlessly and then disappeared underwater, emerging a few seconds later with a dark roundish shell. A few more dives, and he had collected several shells, placing them on the grass. As we walked home with the shells, I asked him their purpose. "You will see," he replied.

At home, Bodi set down the shells on the grass and got himself a large knife. "Watch this," he said. He carefully opened a shell with the knife and with a deft twist of his fingers flipped over the cream coloured flesh inside. He looked inside carefully, discarded the shell, and picked another. He had gone through several when he shouted, "Look!" It was a miraculous sight: a pearl ensconced safely within the folds of the flesh inside the shell.

Collecting those shells became my new obsession. Every day Bodi and I went to the pond and dived, filling a bucket with shells. Perhaps one in ten yielded a pearl. Most were small, but one day we scored a large one, about ¼" in diameter.

I watched Bodi to learn his technique. But there was a trick to turning over the flesh that I could not master. No matter how hard I tried I simply could not reveal the gem. So the secret of finding pearls stayed with him.

Bodi eventually left our house. That was the end of my pearl hunting days. It was much later that I learned that the Water Gypsies of Bangladesh are expert pearl hunters.

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