For as long as I can remember I have always been drawn to the ocean. Growing up I've always wanted to learn how to surf, but just assumed that there were no waves in India and that I would probably have to go to California one day to start surfing.
By the time I finished high school I grew tired of living in the city and wanted desperately to move to a smaller, more peaceful place, and live closer to nature. I decided to move to the university town of Manipal to pursue my higher studies. Little did I know that this decision would change my life forever! It was here, six years ago that my boyfriend Tushar and I met the Surfing Swamis, a couple of surfers from California who introduced us to the world of surfing and showed us what it meant to be “stoked” on life!
I will never forget the feeling of riding my first wave! It was truly magical! I was smiling all the way to the shore and all the way back home from the beach! I knew I would be surfing for the rest of my life!
Tushar and I had been bit by the surf bug and all we wanted to do was buy a board! So in the summer of 2007, we sold everything we possibly could and saved up enough money to buy our very first surfboard! We were stoked! We shared that board between the two of us for the first two years of our surf lives; driving down to the beach in the wee hours of the morning just to go catch some waves before heading for class and spending every Sunday at the beach whether there were waves or no waves. In between sessions we’d lie on the shore and dream of the days when we’d both have a surfboard for ourselves and imagine us as future pro surfers, surfing some of the best waves in the world!
One thing’s for sure. Surfing changed our perspective on life and helped us get our priorities right. It made us realize the importance of living our lives now rather than later. By the time we graduated college we couldn’t imagine moving back to the city, doing a nine to five job and being unable to surf every day. We wanted to live the surfer’s dream and decided to start our own surf school called, The Shaka Surf Club. Initially, our parents were quite apprehensive of our unconventional decision. However, the universe kept sending us signs, showing us we were on the right path and that motivated us to keep following our passion.
We have a very small surf community here in India. We’re a tribe of just over a hundred surfers, scattered over a vast coastline. It’s such an exciting time to be a surfer in India; literally everybody knows everybody! We’re a family of first generation surfers, who funnily enough have the joy of pushing our mums and dads into their first waves!
Surfing is pretty much unheard of in India and it will take some time for the sport itself to become popular here. Most people don’t know how to swim and live in fear of the ocean. Besides these factors, there is a lot of social pressure on women to look and dress a certain way. Dark skin is not considered beautiful and therefore most women are afraid of getting tanned.
When I first started surfing, I received a lot of negative comments on my skin color. “Oh my God Ishita! You’ve become so dark!” “Have you been working in a charcoal factory?” I heard it all. Indian mainstream media has always glorified fair skin and this reaction wasn't new to me. I for one have never understood this obsession. Although such remarks were quite hurtful at first, I've now learned to find humor in them.
From my experience surfing in the village I’ve noticed that most parents don’t allow their daughters to surf after they reach puberty because they are concerned about their attire in the water and prefer to limit their interaction with other boys in the community. With that being said, I think in the near future we will find that it’ll be the women from bigger cities, who come from more open-minded families who will take to surfing and inspire the next generation of women surfers in the country.
Having no other Indian girls to look up to and learn from I’ve always had to compare myself to the boys. It can be quite intimidating being the only girl in the line up. Men just naturally tend to have more upper body strength and this allows them to paddle for waves more aggressively. Initially, I would get demotivated because the guys would paddle out with relative ease and I would hobble back to the beach every ten minutes or so, completely exhausted, embarrassed and ready to almost give up on the idea of becoming a surfer.
I remember when I first started surfing, my arms were really weak and I barely had any stamina. I would struggle to paddle out beyond the breaking waves and would constantly get thrown around and beat up by longboard. I learned quickly that wipe-outs are just as much a part of surfing as actually riding a wave and after a while you begin to enjoy the wipe-outs too!
It took me a while to realize that you don’t become a surfer overnight. In fact it’s more like a lifetime commitment. It takes years to understand the ways of the ocean, to learn how to read its changes and move with them or to calmly obey its greater forces.
Over the years I’ve developed my own style of surfing and found my own respectable place in the male dominated line up.
Had someone told me ten years ago that I would one day go on to become the first surfer girl in India, I would’ve never believed it. But as crazy as it is, I have had the good fortune of being introduced to this amazing world and I can’t help but think that I must’ve done something good in my past life to deserve this!
Surfing has given a lot to me and really shaped me into becoming the person I am today. The ocean has been a great humbling and empowering force in my life. It was in those moments when I was scared out of my mind, as I paddled into the biggest waves of my life that I learned to embrace challenges and face my fears head on. I learned to be patient as I waited for the swells to rise and to just go with the flow, no matter what life throws at you. I find myself drawing parallels between surfing and life. I now chase my dreams with the same vigor and passion as I charge into waves, even if it means wiping-out and facing defeat every once in a while; because I know there’s always going to be another wave coming.
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
areudirty
pixelskylines
romaincrisis
dailybridgerton
amandla