The swimming sensation of Kempambudhi Kere
Bengaluru's rich swimming legacy dates back to the 1920s, with notable champions like Nisha Millet and Dhinidhi Desinghu leading the way.
It’s May, the long-awaited showers have finally – sorta, kinda – arrived, and the blazing crimson of the gulmohars against relentlessly blue skies reassure old Bengalureans that not all of the charms of their remembered city have been lost to “progress”. May is also summer vacation season, which means the city’s many swimming pools – and Bengaluru has more Olympic sized pools than any other city in the country – are packed with shrieking children, some of whom, although they don’t know it yet, are destined for sporting greatness.
The British legacy of gentlemen’s clubs and missionary schools, most of which had their own swimming pools, had ensured that swimming had historically been a preoccupation, albeit an elite one, in the city. It was the opening, in 1970, of the (recently revived) Kensington Swimming Pool by the Ulsoor lake, however, that made swimming part of the city’s mainstream leisure and sporting culture. In the 80s, the growing interest in swimming saw Bengaluru’s champions begin to make a splash at the national level, bringing attention to the city as a potential hub for athlete training, especially given its clement year-round weather. Swim clubs, including the famous Basavanagudi Aquatic Centre (BAC, founded 1986) and the KC Reddy Swim Centre (founded 1994, now Global Swim Centre) in Sadashivanagar, began to proliferate, their crack swim teams facing off at citywide competitions and raising the overall pitch.
With legendary coaches like Nihar Ameen – he returned home in the early 90s after a stint as assistant US National Team coach, and now trains national champions at the Padukone-Dravid Centre for Sports Excellence – and Pradeep Kumar Sreedharan – National Swimming Coach since 2005, and head coach at BAC – also pledging their troth to Bengaluru, the sport zoomed into a different league. Many of the country’s 28 Olympian swimmers, including Nisha Millet, Hakimuddin Habibullah, Shikha Tandon, Rehan Poncha, Gagan Ullalmath, paraswimmer Sharath Gayakwad, and most recently, at Tokyo 2020, Srihari Nataraj, are natives of Bengaluru. The latest – and youngest – to join the roll of honour is 14-year-old Dhinidhi Desinghu, who won seven gold medals at the National Games 2023 and broke Indian records with her relay team at the Hangzhou Asian Games.
What most people do not know, however, is that Nisha, Shikha and Dhinidhi are the torchbearers of a proud Bengaluru tradition of record-breaking swimmer girls, the first among whom was a little-known eight-year-old called Byramma. In the 1920s, when the city’s many lakes and tanks still thrived, the 16th century Kempambudhi Kere in Chamarajpet, built by city founder Kempegowda I, was reputed to be the deepest and the cleanest. Chosen by the Bangalore Scouts Association as the location for their swim club, it attracted many locals, including Byramma.
The little girl’s potential was noticed by coach Srinivasa Rao, who took her under his wing. On July 5, 1935, after putting her through a series of endurance trials, he reckoned his protégé was ready to attempt something big. At midnight, by the flickering of dozens of kerosene lamps, Byramma entered the water to begin her epic swim. She emerged from the lake an incredible 18 hours later, at 6 pm, having smashed the world record for nonstop swimming. Felicitated by Sir Mirza Ismail, the then Diwan of Mysore, and attaining global recognition via the editor of an American children’s magazine, who had been among the witnesses to her spectacular feat, Byramma inexplicably faded into obscurity. Until, in 2012, a 70-year-old Bengaluru resident called Vemagal Somashekhar found a thread of her story in an old newspaper report, followed the very cold trail, collected documentation connected with Byramma’s achievement, including a photograph with her coach, and submitted it to the State Archives Department, where it is now, one presumes, safely preserved.