Fear flight

I am driven by fear. It can be of the
irrational kind, emotional or sometimes raw unadulterated fear that leaves me
in a state of stupendous shock. And when it hits me, I cannot wait to overcome
it or have it dissipate. Yet, strangely just as soon as I return to a state of
predictable normalcy, I start secretly craving the sensation of being
terrified.

I have had this problem for a while. What
makes it even more interesting that is that I play it safe almost all of the
time! Nor am I am in anyways an extreme adrenalin junkie trying to air flip on
a skate board. But every once in a while, when there comes an opportunity to do
something decidedly nuts I seem to be uncharacteristically interested. I am in
fact very proud of this binary form of sanity-insanity.

I have had a bit of soft spot for
heights and centrifugal forces almost since I was a kid. I started co relating
higher to better. The air would get fresher, the horizon would widen and the
number that indicated altitude increased, representing symbolically infinity
since there would almost be something higher to climb even if you were at the
top. The craving for centrifugal forces came from my first ride on a motorcycle
to my earliest memories of driving on mountain passes. Roller coasters married
these two aspects very well but turned out that it they were also fairly
predictable after the first dip.

I sky-dived from 14000 feet, a height
to this date, remains my personal highest. But amazingly, it wasn’t as scary as
I expected. In fact the few minutes that I fell through the skies, it felt
poetic. It was the skewed sense of perspective when I was so high up that never
made me realize the insanity of the idea and it was the slow decent with the
parachute that never realize give me the perception of falling.

However, as I first caught sight grey
concrete concave Verzasca dam, I felt a very distinct chill creep through my
bones. The wall of the dam seemed endless and as I scaled my eyes vertically to
the bottom, it appeared that I was looking into a bottomless valley. 220 m then
seemed like a long way up and plenty high. The idea of jumping down that wall with
barely a rope tied to my legs seemed a lot cooler in principle than how it appeared
in reality.

I cannot explain what took over at
that point. I knew that I was plenty scared but yet I made my way almost lazily
to the staging area. I was fidgeting continuously but at no point had any
interest in rejecting getting suited up with my harness. As the instructor
explained a few basic procedures, I paid due attention as if it was just an
ordinary day. Even as I was waiting my turn, clapping hands and rising on my
toes intermittently, my heart bit seemed normal. I even questioned why I wasn’t
panicking.

Of course, as soon as I made my way up
the mezzanine platform, the magnitude of the leap rushed into my beating heart.
Despite my best attempts my eyes made my way down the ravine and the expanse of
the deep that I was about to jump into. It took only a fraction of a second but
panic was already settling in my quivering knees. Yet, almost as I was being
controlled externally, I inched my way to edge and stared at the horizon
refusing to look down in any which way. The jump instructor mentioned that he
would count to three and then I was expected to fall over. I instinctively knew
that any kind of deliberation or any rational brain activity would make me turn
back so when the instructor said “two” and was about to say “three”, I had
jumped.

As my momentum shifted, I fell
forward. I remember distinctly a few inches from the ledge, as I was already
falling, I wanted to go back! But as soon as that thought passed over, I was
rapidly gaining velocity falling freely towards the bottom. The fall was
supposed to be seven seconds only but they felt so long. In fact, I genuinely
wondered why my fall was not being arrested and if the rope had come loose. But
soon enough, the bungy rope caught on and I started slowing down rapidly. The
fear was so extreme that I hadn’t said a word all the way down. Only when I rebounded,
relief flew through with such rapidity that I screamed loudly in exhilaration. I
bobbed a few times before I was pulled up back again.

Fear was escaping my body rapidly and simultaneously
being replaced by indescribable emotion of pure joy. This was coupled by a
weird sensation of blood rushing out of my head after hanging upside down for a
while. I looked back and saw exactly what I had just done.

You could question the sanity of doing
this. Or perhaps even the need of it. But I had all the answers I wanted. As I stood
in the cold breeze on the platform again, within the gorgeousness of the Swiss
Alps, I brandished a smile that was genuine, deep and which lasted for three
whole days. Even if that meant I had to relearn how pure unadulterated fear
felt like jumping off a ledge into nothingness.