‘I had drowned to death’ - Shweta Kawaat

I started recalling strange instances when I was very young.

I had learnt to talk quite early and would grasp words easily. I was a year old when my mother was trying to put me to sleep but I was being stub born.

She slapped me and then I started telling her that I will go away to our bungalow in Madh Island where I stay with my dad, two elder brothers and my dadi (father's mom).

I told her I was the youngest and was 10 years old. She was shocked to hear me speak like that but dismissed it as a figment of my imagination. Next, when I was four years old, I was playing with my grandmother and I started telling her that I had a grandmother who lived with us in a bungalow in Madh Island and while travelling in a ferry, our family had drowned and everyone had died.

I used to repeat this quite often and cry saying that my grandmother was being harassed for property and that she needed me. My mother says that I would have a different look on my face while relating these instances.

She was worried, says she stopped asking me about it and never raised the subject hoping I'd forget it all.

Now I have very faint memories of the incidences but what is truly remarkable is that I suffer from hydrophobia and have not learnt how to swim. I feel scared even going near water now or indulging in water sports.