“Eros is good”
Beautiful velvet swirling sensuously around every inch of your near bare body can get dangerously addictive. Neither food nor sex can equal the erotic tactility of water.

Powerful strokes cut through the water at precise angles, a couple of hours after which limbs liquid with the exertion relax at the edge of the pool. Combined with the waters heady caress, there is pleasure in the pain. Every particle of my body surrenders to this sweet agony.

But like any psychedelic drug, dosage needs to be consistently upped to obtain similar results. I slowly increase the number of laps till I’m almost working out three hours everyday covering a stretch of two and a half kilometers. A few weeks into this madness and the body resists what the soul craves for. “Swimmer’s ear,” the doctor sympathetically clucks and pronounces. A fungal infection of the ear that could leave me 60 per cent hearing impaired or to put it more bluntly deaf. But hey the first whimsical question that pops into my head which I give tongue to is, “What about mermaids then?” “Earplugs and eardrops,” he prescribes, not unkindly completely ignoring my, what I considered then, valid question.

Free ears, something which I never thought I’d ever say (I know it sounds like a corny slogan for a right to information or something) can only be appreciated relatively, when you are forced to go about with stuffed ones. Not only is it incredibly painful it also surprisingly heightened my olfactory senses. This seems like a good thing but it really is not. The aromatic delights of a dead lizard somewhere in some far flung corner of the club is not something you wish to revel in. Also the pain is a bloody impairment. A hundred and twenty laps takes what seems like an interminably long time, almost an eternity to complete. A three day respite will do me a world of good. To free ears. Cheers.

“Eros had better be better.”