The owner of a small furniture shop in Aluva has been making a unique contribution to life in Kerala.

A land of backwaters, rivers and a seacoast, the state has witnessed several accidents involving boats. In May this year, 27 people died when their boat capsized in Tanur. That was merely the latest.

What set Saji Valasseril thinking was an incident 21 years ago, when 29 people lost their lives after their boat, travelling from Muhamma to Kumarakom, capsized in the Vembanad Lake.

“There were other mishaps too that made me want to do something,” the Aluva resident said.

Fifteen students, two teachers and an employee were killed in 2007 when their boat sank in Thattekkad. Forty-five people died in 2009 after their boat sank in the Periyar National Park in Thekkady.

Saji felt that if people knew how to swim, and could at least stay calm and afloat till rescuers arrived, lives could be saved. It was natural for Saji to think about swimming as the solution: his late father, V. Thomas Mani, was a champion swimmer during his days in the army’s Madras Regiment, and had taught Saji to swim in the river Periyar.

In March 2010, Saji decided to address the subject of drownings in Kerala, starting with his own family. His two children — Merin and Jerin — and the children of a friend began learning to swim under his tutelage in the Periyar, which flows by Aluva.

Because he was thinking of boat accidents, Saji oriented his swimming lessons towards an eventual river crossing. Merin did just that on the 39th day of her training: aged 13, she swam across the Periyar, Kerala’s biggest river in terms of the volume of water carried.

The younger Jerin followed suit: he took two to two-and-a-half months of training.

Around 2012, Saji named his endeavour “Valasseril River Swimming Club”. By 2013, the number of people able to cross the river had risen to 38.

“About one-third to a quarter of a batch reach the competence level where they become eligible to try a crossing. The rest learn swimming and go,” Saji said.

He said he expected a trainee to acquire the basic skills in 16 days.

Training session within a GI pipe-structure. File photo

In 2014, a total of 76 people swam across the Periyar. In 2017, the number touched 87 and in 2019, it rose to 91. The pandemic saw a spike, with almost 240 people crossing the river each year in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, some 1,620 people trained and 140 crossed the river.

“In all, I estimate that about 8,000 people have by now learnt swimming from us,” Saji said, leafing through the files of entry forms submitted over the years.

He said the current length of the crossing was about 750 metres as the route was to and fro. The maximum depth allowed is around 40 feet.

Saji’s swimming sessions have also attracted a clutch of differently abled people and senior citizens. Media reports have cited a double amputee, a boy born without hands, a girl who underwent neurosurgery and was weak in one leg, and a septuagenarian who swam with her hands tied, among those who have crossed the Periyar.

In the early days, Saji’s programme was focused on children. In 2016, a parent unexpectedly swam along and died of a heart attack. Following this, an ambulance became a constant presence at the site and, on the days of crossings, a safety boat was engaged.

Saji later began training adults as well. Nowadays, no adult gets to the crossing stage without the trainers being convinced that they are up to it, he said.

In a state where many houses once had private ponds, the declining engagement of the average Malayali with swimming has been a product of altered lifestyles.

Greater construction has meant the old ponds have been levelled and built over. An overwhelming emphasis on academics has meant that schoolchildren and college students became distanced from swimming, or they learnt it as a skill paid for and acquired at one of the state’s modern but expensive swimming pools.

As these changes took place, the Periyar’s kadavus or bathing ghats suffered neglect and with that, these familiar places along the river that featured a gradual progression in depth and were ideal for teaching swimming dwindled.

Compounding the issue has been the problem of sand mining (it plagues many rivers in Kerala), which creates places with sudden variations in depth.

A May 2022 report in Mathrubhumi said: “As per the records of the fire and rescue department, on an average, three people drown in the state per day.”

It said that 2021 alone witnessed 1,102 reported cases of drowning, up from less than 1,000 the year before. Many people drowned in rivers and ponds while visiting these places in groups.

Even if one knew swimming, tackling natural water bodies with currents was difficult and contributed to the fatalities, the news report said.

M. Naushad, director (technical) of the Kerala fire and rescue services, told this writer that while knowing how to swim is always a good thing, people ignoring instructions to desist from swimming when and where the conditions are not ideal has been a worry.

Saji, who is clear that his job is not to create champion swimmers but impart a survival skill, hosts his training at Manappuram in Aluva, a place by the Periyar famed for a Shiva temple where the bank slopes gradually into the water.

Here, Saji came up with an ingenious device (his fabrication skills came of use) — a removable, collapsible 70ftx40ft structure of GI pipes. He now uses four such structures.

Each of them is anchored and kept afloat by an array of inflatable rubber tubes. The area within, which is used for training, is separated into seven lanes of varying water depth.

The trainees work their way from the shallower to the deeper lanes. This graduation takes weeks. It is only after such a progression over 50 days that the best get a shot at river-crossing, monitored by expert swimmers with a kayak in tow.

For Saji, this method has worked well so far. He believes it can be replicated at other locations.

“If you look at where people are drowning these days, you will be amazed. There is a large temple pond, which was cleaned and beautifully redone only to have people drown in it,” he said.

“My device can be built to the required scale. All it needs is the shallows of these ponds. If people are trained to swim in such ponds using the device, and they venture deep only after they are properly skilled, fatalities can be minimised.”

Thanks to the four structures in the water, Saji said, the club can train close to 1,000 people at a time. As a concept, scaling up won’t be appreciated by discerning trainers because of the inbuilt danger of something going wrong -- for instance, the trainers’ attention risks being spread thin as the number of trainees rises. Health issues are another danger.

But against the backdrop of Kerala’s emergent equations with water -- there is the newfound reality of floods to cope with during the rains apart from the recurrent boat tragedies — Saji merits a hearing.

Saji says that municipal authorities and elected representatives have supported his project in Aluva. To aid the scale of training and reduce the risks related to the natural variabilities of a river, he wishes for a large tank with powerful pumps that would mimic the water depthand flow at the Periyar’s banks.

It will cost money and sponsors will be needed. Saji says he charges his trainees nothing except some fees towards the expenses around safety. His main source of income remains the small shop: Valasseril Furniture.