Swimming Lessons — Rohinton Mistry summary and analysis

 

Rohinton Mistry and the Background of the Story

Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay in 1952 and moved to Toronto in 1975. His experience of migration becomes an important background to his fiction. His collection Tales from Firozesha Baag consists of interconnected stories about Parsi life in Bombay. Kersi Boyce appears on the margins of these stories and eventually migrates to Canada. “Swimming Lessons” is the concluding story of the collection, in which Kersi attempts to understand and accommodate himself to his new cultural environment. The unit also notes the considerable autobiographical element in these stories.

The story therefore has a double geographical and psychological setting:

Bombay — memory, childhood, family, Parsi identity and the past.

Toronto — immigration, isolation, cultural difference and the uncertain future.

The movement between these two worlds constitutes the central structure of the story.

Kersi and the Old Man

The story opens in Toronto with Kersi observing an old, disabled man living in his apartment building. The old man moves around in a wheelchair and spends much of his time in the lobby talking to residents.

When he first meets Kersi, he asks him to guess his age. Kersi guesses sixty-five, while the man reveals that he is nearly seventy-seven. Kersi notices that other residents also participate in this little ritual, giving the old man younger ages depending upon his mood.

The old man immediately reminds Kersi of his grandfather in Bombay, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Thus, an apparently ordinary encounter in Toronto opens a door into Kersi’s past.

Kersi remembers his grandfather’s illness in Bombay.

His grandfather had suffered from Parkinsonism and osteoporosis. His mother had taken enormous responsibility for caring for him, dealing with bedpans, dressings and bedsores. Eventually, because of his deteriorating condition, Grandpa was admitted to Parsi General Hospital.

Kersi remembers that he did not visit him often enough. After Grandpa's death, this becomes a source of guilt and regret.

One of his strongest memories of Grandpa is not his illness but the small acts of affection from his earlier life: whenever Grandpa went out, he would bring pink and white sugar-coated almonds for Kersi and his brother Percy.

This memory demonstrates how nostalgia works in the story. Kersi does not simply remember historical events; he remembers sensory fragments and emotional details.

The Parents in Bombay

A major structural feature of the story is the simultaneous presentation of Kersi's life in Toronto and his parents' life in Bombay.

Kersi's parents receive letters from Canada. His mother is excited whenever a letter arrives, but his father complains that Kersi's letters reveal almost nothing about his actual life.

Kersi writes about:

Canadian weather,

his new apartment,

being fine,

ordinary details of life.

But he does not reveal his emotional condition.

His father therefore suspects that Kersi is hiding something.

This is important because Kersi's silence becomes a representation of immigrant experience. Physical distance creates emotional distance. His parents know that he is in Canada, but they do not really know what Canada is doing to him.

From his apartment, Kersi watches two women sunbathing in bikinis.

At a distance, they appear attractive and glamorous. He becomes fascinated by them and imagines getting a closer look.

When he eventually encounters them in the building's elevator, however, the illusion disappears. Under the harsh fluorescent lighting, he notices:

wrinkles,

ageing hands,

sagging bodies,

varicose veins.

The episode is comic but also significant.

It reveals Kersi's voyeurism, sexual desire and loneliness, while simultaneously exposing the difference between fantasy and reality. Distance allows him to construct an imaginary Canada; direct contact destroys the illusion.

The story repeatedly demonstrates that appearance and reality do not coincide.

The Decision to Learn Swimming

Kersi decides to take swimming lessons.

The decision has a deeper significance because he has never learned to swim even though his childhood home in Bombay was close to Chaupatty Beach.

Why did he never learn?

There were two major obstacles:

1. Money

Private swimming clubs were too expensive.

2. Pollution

Chaupatty Beach was extremely polluted. When his mother tried to teach him there, garbage repeatedly floated against their bodies, making swimming almost impossible.

Thus, the sea—which conventionally represents life, freedom and regeneration—has become polluted and threatening.

The swimming pool in Toronto appears to offer the possibility of a new beginning.

The unit explicitly identifies swimming as a metaphor for acceptance and assimilation into the new culture.

The First Swimming Lesson

Kersi attends his first swimming lesson.

The instructor, Ron, tries to reassure the nervous students.

Before entering the pool, however, Kersi encounters three young boys. They mock him because of his Indian appearance.

One of them makes a racist reference to curry and suggests that Kersi will make the entire swimming pool smell of curry.

This moment is crucial because Kersi's fear is no longer merely a fear of water. It becomes a fear of social rejection.

The boys reduce him to a racial stereotype. Kersi does not confront them. Instead, he internalizes the humiliation and begins to question whether he can ever belong in this society.

This is one of the story's clearest representations of racism and stereotyping.

Kersi's Fear of Water

During the swimming lesson, Kersi is terrified.

Ron takes him towards the deep end, where the water is fifteen feet deep. He is instructed to hold a metal hoop and jump into the water.

Kersi obeys because he is too frightened to resist.

He jumps, swallows water and struggles desperately. Eventually Ron pulls him back to safety.

The class applauds.

But instead of feeling triumphant, Kersi thinks:

What if he had lost his grip?

His fear becomes associated with his racial anxiety. He begins to wonder whether the instructor genuinely cares about the lives of non-white immigrants.

The swimming pool therefore becomes psychologically complicated. It is simultaneously:

a place of learning,

a site of fear,

a symbol of Canadian society,

a possible site of assimilation,

and a space in which racial difference becomes visible.

Kersi Gives Up

Kersi attends another lesson but remains deeply anxious.

He struggles to float and paddle while constantly trying to maintain his dignity.

Eventually, he stops attending the classes.

Ron telephones, but Kersi lies that he has the flu.

He never returns.

His swimming trunks are placed in an unused drawer, and his swimming lessons become another failed attempt at transformation.

The narrator initially concludes that there has been “no watery rebirth.”

This is significant because water traditionally symbolizes purification, rebirth and renewal. Kersi has entered the supposedly clean Canadian swimming pool but has failed to achieve the expected symbolic transformation.

Meanwhile, Kersi has sent his collection of stories to his parents.

His parents are delighted to discover that their son has secretly become a writer.

His father had assumed that Kersi was still working as a clerk in an insurance company.

The book therefore reveals an aspect of Kersi's life that his letters had concealed.

His mother reads the stories emotionally and realizes that they are filled with memories of Bombay. She concludes that Kersi must be unhappy in Canada because he continues to write about his childhood and home.

His father offers a different interpretation.

He argues that writers naturally use their memories and experiences. Writing about Bombay does not necessarily mean that Kersi is unhappy.

The Story Becomes a Story About Storytelling

Mistry introduces a striking self-reflexive dimension.

Kersi's parents are not merely reading a book. They are discussing the nature of:

memory,

fiction,

autobiography,

artistic transformation,

truth,

imagination.

The father explains that writers alter experience. They may:

add,

subtract,

rearrange,

transform,

intensify,

or diminish reality.

Therefore, fiction cannot simply be equated with fact.

The story consequently becomes a commentary on how personal experience becomes literature.

The Canadian Winter

As the story progresses, Toronto moves into winter.

Snow begins to fall.

Kersi reflects on the way immigrants from warm countries initially enjoy snow but eventually become tired of winter.

He realizes that even his memories of snow are mediated by childhood books such as Enid Blyton's stories.

This is an important insight.

Kersi's Canadian experience is not simply a direct experience of Canada. His imagination has already been shaped by literature.

The Old Man's Decline

The old man in the apartment building becomes increasingly weak.

His body deteriorates, and he suffers another stroke.

Eventually, he is taken to hospital.

Kersi notices that the medicinal smell associated with the old man disappears from the hallway.

Only then does he fully understand that something has changed.

Later, when Kersi attempts to learn the old man's name, he discovers that the old man has died.

The irony is painful:

Kersi had spoken to him repeatedly, yet he never knew his name.

This becomes a powerful representation of immigrant alienation.

People live physically close to one another but remain emotionally and personally distant.

Berthe's Broken Family

Another subplot involves Berthe, the building superintendent.

She frequently quarrels with her husband and son.

Eventually, her husband and son leave her after a major quarrel.

Kersi imagines them driving away through the snow.

This subplot mirrors the story's larger concern with broken relationships and displacement.

The apartment building contains many immigrants and families, yet none of them completely understands one another.

The building becomes a miniature multicultural society: people share physical space but retain separate histories, languages, identities and emotional worlds.

Kersi's parents eventually finish reading all the stories.

They feel that they have come to know their son better.

Yet they also realize that there is much more about him that they do not know.

The father's statement that the whole story can never be told and the whole truth can never be known becomes particularly important.

Kersi Finally Enters the Water

Near the end, Kersi cleans his bathtub and decides to take a bath.

This ordinary act becomes symbolically important.

He immerses himself in the water.

Initially, he is afraid. He holds his breath and goes underwater.

Then he tries again.

He opens his eyes underwater and slowly begins to see.

He repeats the action several times.

This is the crucial transformation of the story.

He failed to achieve rebirth through formal swimming lessons, but he now voluntarily confronts water in the privacy of his own space.

The final image therefore suggests that real transformation cannot simply be imposed from outside. It must arise from an individual's willingness to confront fear.

The Ending: A New Beginning

The story ends with the arrival of spring.

The snow melts.

Water flows through the streets and drains.

Kersi thinks about joining the swimming class again.

This is important because the story does not end with complete assimilation or a dramatic declaration of success. Instead, it ends with a renewed willingness to try.

The final movement from winter towards spring suggests:

fear → confrontation → understanding → renewal.