Skydiving: What pure terror feels like

I know what pure terror feels like. In that moment, the mind freezes, the brain is plugged out of the system, you are incapable of action. For a glimpse, all you need to do is jump out of a plane.

Human beings are crazy, unpredictable animals. Take me, for instance. To a large measure, I’m a practical creature, even apologetically so at times, and I derive comfort and succor from routines, the sum of which make up my compartmentalized daily life.

The perfect candidate, it seems, for a jolt. And strange even to my mind, I welcome these moments of immense danger wholeheartedly. When asked if I wanted to skydive, I agreed without pause or thought, surprised that anyone would willingly pass on this opportunity. It’s only as the days before my jump plodded on did I realize just how many would not take the risk.

And it’s as the days dragged on did my brain start to process the risk. So even if I was not planning on backing off from the jump, I still sought some security. Numbers provide a great illusion, and the website of Skyhigh, the firm in Aligarh (who’d have thought, right?) which offers the experience of this extreme sport, and the profiles of the key people to whom I would be entrusting my life, offered just that hypnotic effect. Captain Anil Choudhary, chief pilot, over 6,000 hours flying hours; Shiv Singh, skydiver and parachute packer, over 3,000 jumps, has packed parachutes for 17 years; and Rajkumar Balakrishnan, the person I would be strapped to during the tandem skydive, with over 5,100 jumps, a Limca Book world record holder. Big numbers equals much experience equals safety, I told myself, my heart thudding nonetheless. I mean, one couldn’t of course hope for a “safer” environment to jump off a plane, but this death-defying sport is all about chances, right?

I will touch 40 this year, and it did strike me that 15 to 20 years earlier, I never even sought this illusion of safety. Incidentally, this is a year of another first in my life: I kept Lent, with a self-imposed ban on non-vegetarian food as well as alcohol until Easter. (All this seemed to have accomplished was sending me off into frequent daydreams of the greatest Easter feast to have ever been made.)

There is a connection, I have decided. A couple of years ago—or to be more precise, one year and four months ago—I quit smoking for the third time in my life. The first two times were for the benefit of my two daughters who I was carrying at that time. This time, since it was purely for my own health, I found it was not so easy to give up this beast, my mind succumbing always to the easiest of excuses. Hence now, each passing month, my sense of accomplishment at having conquered the craving is magnified. The gross sense that I was being controlled by this substance had finally won over my love for the ever present security of this companion.

So how does skydiving connect with all of this; on one end an extreme sport, and on the other, dietary restrictions—doesn’t quite add up, right?

A two-hour drive from Delhi led me to the airfield where Rudra Bhanu Solanki has recently started the operations for Skyhigh. For the past nine years, his father has run a pilot training academy here. At 8 am when I entered the hanger, two of the staff were busy dismantling the seats, and—believe it or not— removing the door of the Cessna on which we would fly up to a height of 10,000 feet. It took Solanki three years or so to convince the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) to give him the necessary permissions to start Skyhigh; India apparently doesn’t yet have any guidelines, safety or otherwise, regarding skydiving—it was finally agreed that they would abide by the safety regulations in place in the US.

Since it was a tandem jump—meaning that I have no responsibility towards my own life or fun—it was appropriately Balakrishnan who was visibly more nervous than I during our ride up. I had just four instructions to remember, and over the noise of the plane, Balakrishnan, who was sitting at the open door, continuously signalled these to me: cross my hands over the chest (for no reason other than to prevent me from grabbing, in panic, the pilot or the side of the plane while taking off), arch my neck, and after the jump, arch my back and bend my knees and get a grip of his legs.

As I mentioned before, surprisingly, I suffered from no jitters, not when I sat next to the open door, not even when I put both my feet out of the door, by now strapped to Balakrishnan. This changed in exactly a moment—as soon as I began to lean forward, the wind lashing out at us. And the drop. For those first few seconds of the free fall, I forgot everything I was supposed to do—the arched back, the bent knees. As the mind unscrambled, I remembered to put my legs in position, I started to enjoy the freedom of the fall, but I’d forgotten all about the parachute. Good thing then that I didn’t have to take care of my own life.

From the fall to the landing, the jump lasted barely three minutes. But it’s difficult to forget the rush of the fall and the beauty of gliding in the sky once the parachute opened. It’s been days now since my free fall, but I have been reliving those three minutes that I flew in my head; especially the few seconds that I lost all control over my brain, and all I felt was fear. How I admire Balakrishnan who was controlling the jump, the parachute, and taking photographs at the same time. How remarkable to be in charge of the control panel within your body.

Before the jump, I kept asking Balakrishnan and Solanki whether jumping off a plane felt “normal” to them now. Where was the excitement and the high and the fear, after all, after 5,000 jumps? They are afraid each time they jump, both solemnly told me. And that’s what makes each jump a new adventure.

The next time I jump—and I will—I plan to focus on those first few seconds, try and be aware of my fear, but in control of my body and mind.