Remembering the Swing

Who amongst us has had enough of the playground swing? Among the smaller pleasures of life which one coveted and never quite got enough of when growing up,  was time at the swing. Of course, you could make do with the slide, the and if you were desperate, the jungle gym but what you really lusted after was the swing. Someone always monopolised the swing; someone was always there before and usually hogged the swing till eternity it seemed. Some bossy mother made her entire brood take rides while you waited wistfully. But when one did get one’s chance, it was blissful to set off on the brief aerial joyride that came one’s way.

The swing is designed to provide us with a brief respite from gravity. It allows us to generate enough momentum so as to soar upwards in temporary defiance of the laws of nature. Of course, this was merely an illusion since every arc of ascent returned as gravity-induced descent but what the swing managed was to render gravity a friend of motion rather than its implacable enemy. creatures flew for a while, safely tethered admittedly, but the sensation was liberating. 

It is easy to see why the swing holds such fascination for the child. It allows for an experience of flight, even as it facilitates an exploration of a new sensation. At that time in our lives when we use our bodies as mini laboratories to experience the world, when we roll down every hillock ,splash splishedly in every puddle and put everything that excites our curiosity and is into the mouth, the swing allows our bodies to experience the sensation of being detached from the ground and being hurled upwards in a slash against the sky. The best part about the swing is that the momentum needed to take flight could be generated by even a child- in the worst all that was needed is someone to give the first heave.

The amusement park ride is really a chemically souped that re-scales its experience to hallucinogenic proportions. The swing here becomes a crash test for our senses as we are hurled, cannonballed and careened from very high places at very high speeds. Our insides hurtle against the outside world before being upended abruptly. The world blurs in a visceral as space and time collide inside our stomach. Our senses are disaggregated, we become aware of our own apparatus as it gets abused in ever newer ways. Again, for children for whom our bodies are laboratories where experiments with the universe are still being carried out, the entire experience is enthralling without being disturbing. For adults, who have started taking their bodies for granted, it is a deeply disorienting experience for most.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the swing we find installed in homes and gardens, particularly in states like Gujarat. Here the swing is a large plank of sedateness,  a stately charpoy suspended from the ceiling, whose main function in life is to provide gentle rhythm to the person seated. This swing comes with an speed and begins to wheeze and tremble if pushed harder. Meant to provide some sense of movement in a largely immobile world, time could be measured in the rhyme of its creaks.

The more adult use of swing as a motif is visible in old Hindi films where romantic couples set off in swings suspended from long garlanded ropes. The length of floral rope was significant; the couple meant to launch off into space and stay there for a while. Perhaps the swing was meant as a sexual metaphor seeking somehow to signify the bliss of union. Man and woman leave the groundedness of reality to take off in an extended haze of pleasure. 

One of the signs of adulthood is an ability to classify the world and distinguish between the important and the unimportant. As we grow older, wiser, richer and more successful, we start spending more and more time dealing with Important Things. We give ourselves fancy designations, we speak in acronyms and write terse memos full of expectations. Our time becomes precious, our pursuits become focused and our life needs to justify itself. 

As we harden into adulthood, we lose the ability to enjoy some of the simplest pleasures of life. We look for meaning and ask questions everything. The swing connects us to a part of us that is happy just to feel alive. Perhaps there is some reason to remember that we too were once little boys and girls who gripped the ropes of a swing ardently with our plump hands and set off on a small journey beyond gravity.

(A version of this piece has appeared previously in the Times of India)