tick, tick ... BOOM!

 

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The twisty roads of Rishikesh are watched over by red and green hills, modest homes and not-so-modest monkeys that stare at you grimly. As the driver manoeuvres skilfully through these roads, glimpses of long stretches of the Ganges can be seen – its perennial burbling echoing throughout the city.

Rishikesh’s verdure and natural beauty lie dovetailed with its ashrams and traditions. Its historical, religious and cultural significance, as well as its tranquillity, make the city open to several tourists each year.

Yet, for some of us, Rishikesh strikes a different chord. Offering both bungee jumping and river rafting, the city gives you the chance of striking them both off your bucket list. Killing two birds with one stone.  

An incipient fear grows unsteadily as you approach the bungee-jumping office, the place where you register for the activity. You think you are insane for doing this – for registering yourself to a deathly 83-metre jump that may very well be the farcical end of your story. But then there is the whole thing about a bucket list. And there is this whole thing about trying out something new. And there is this thing called adventure. So, you go ahead and register, convincing yourself that 83 metres is not too high.

And boy are you wrong. Because when you do climb that platform and wait on the metal seat for your turn to jump, you realize that any moment now, it’ll be you who’ll be called next. And you realize that 83 metres, - over 270 feet – feels like the altitude at which planes should be flying.

As you wait there with a knotted stomach, the shrieks of people jumping before you can be heard. You are unsure if they reached the bottom, or how they reached the bottom, but their mere stepping off the end of the high crane-like structure sends reverberations across both the platform and your spine. 

And then, it’s your turn. They ask you to come. You get up slowly with trembling fingers. You walk slowly with shaky feet, taking your time to leave the safe platform and move towards the end of the crane. At that moment, the lyrics from Channa Mereya appear to be the darkest, yet ironically comforting, to sing to yourself (or screech to others).

‘Acha chalta hoon
Duaaon mein yaad rakhna
Mere zikr ka zubaan pe swaad rakhna’

You try to gauge the height, craning your neck, but the view is blocked by green-shirted instructors as they stand before you and fit the harness onto you. The instructors make you sit on a wooden chair and doublecheck your harness for its safety. Comforting, you think, but not entirely.

‘Are you ready?’, one of the instructors asks.

You hear yourself giving an awkward response.

You are asked to stand up and walk to the edge of the crane. Gulp. You tiptoe there awkwardly, with your feet being held tight by the harness.

The instructors start counting.

‘3!’

You tiptoe closer to the brink of the crane. Now you are able to see how far below land is. And you immediately regret seeing that. The air in your lungs refuses to come out of your nose.

‘Don’t see down. Look at the yellow sign on the mountain in front of you’, says an instructor.

You search for it nervously, and find it there straight in front of you, on a mountain bang opposite the crane.

‘2!’, you hear the instructors saying.

You tiptoe further. Half your feet lie suspended out the crane with your toes jutting outward. You know there is no turning back now. And technically speaking, you can’t turn back as both your feet are tied. You only hope that the instructors stick to their word and don’t push you.

‘1!’. Tick, Tick … Boom!

You push yourself off the platform, like a diver diving into water for the first time.

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Oh! My! God!

Whoosh! An icy wind bellows thunderously and crashes your face. The fierceness of the wind drowns all sounds, even the sound of your frantically beating heart. Screaming out loud in fear seems impossibly painful as absolute terror steals your voice away. Raw, primal gravity sucks you to the centre of the Earth.

At that moment, you feel like Spider-Man gushing downward from the top of a skyscraper – that iconic scene in any Spider-Man movie. Yet, unfortunately, in a non-fictional world, you don’t have webs shooting out of your wrists. And the fact that you are speeding downwards for a head-on collision with rocks and a meagre stream in the middle of daunting mountains brings out a natural instinct in you – to scream.

Something tightens on your back as the speck of water below widens into a broad stream. It’s the carabiner on your harness. A never-experienced-before pain ripples across your neck. In less than a second, the bungee cord becomes taut. Before you figure out what’s about to happen, it happens.

Like a wayward yo-yo, you are flung upward. And sideward. And the world appears to spin in front of your eyes.

Uh-oh.

You are tossed about with calculated randomness. Everything seems a total blur. But you no longer are afraid. The fear has long been blown away with the wind.

The swinging comes to stop eventually. An exhilarated you is lowered to earth by two instructors and freed from the harness. You are given a bottle of water. But more importantly, you are given a yellow badge that reads, ‘I’ve got guts’. That satisfactorily convinces you that that surreal 83-metre plunge was real after all.

- Hussain