D. Sampathkumar spent the first twenty-two years of his life as a resident of Tambaram. A chartered accountant and financial analyst, he spent the greater part of his professional life as a financial journalist with The Hindu Group of publications.
If, like me, you were a young boy residing in Tambaram, a town just 25 kms southwest of Madras, back in the 1960s, there were only two ways to learn swimming.
One way would be to trek all the way to the Corporation swimming pool at the Marina beach. But at one rupee for a round ticket on the suburban railway line that took you close enough to the swimming pool, it wasn't cheap.
(A girl would have an extra option. One of the city's women's colleges boasted of a swimming pool. But rumour has it that you ran the risk of being ogled at by an old man, through a binocular from a building nearby. Granted that women's swimwear back in those days were designed more on the lines of a tent than anything that Pamela Anderson had sported in the Baywatch television serial. But still ...).
