How do you describe the feeling?

Operational rigor always. I remember writing this earlier as well. The fear is never
conquered. Next time I go bungee jumping, or I go climbing mountains, the fear will still be there. It's just that I'll be able to deal with it knowing that I dealt with it earlier. But it never goes away. It always is.

Big moment - W, KK and P come and give tips. This is awesome. Concentrate on the X's. The Y will follow. The blue sky. That blue sky is yours. Know the moment.

Don't think about it being your first time. Don't think about it being 150 feet.

Just think about not holding the railing. Just think about not jumping off but doing a dead man's fall.

Don't look down.

This is scary.
It's OK to be scared. You are not used to it.
Can you check if the leg harness is fit OK?
It is. I can see it.

And I jumped off. I did a perfect dead man's fall. I flew is a better description. Arms outstretched, eyes on the ground as I went forth to embrace the earth. The wind in my face, gathering speed with every passing moment. The ground getting closer and the rocks bigger.

That is until the first yank.

How do I describe the feeling? How easy it is to describe colours? RGB values and you are done. Or are you? You are done describing the colour in a scientific manner. Classical definition, as Phaedrus calls it. But what of the romantic manner of describing the colour? The warmth an orange evokes, the action warranted by a red? The calm of blue, and the seduction of black? There is no manner of capturing the "romantic" definitions in the "classical" framework. Hardly surprising.

And yet I go - trying to put prose to describe poetry.

Getting back to the point - The feeling.

Classically the entire process during the jump can be divided into two sections. This classification presupposes that the experience till just before the jump - the fastening of the harness, the fitting of the footholds (for lack of a better word), the getting into the cage, the squaring of shoulders (no point meeting fear with droopy shoulders), the war-cry - Hooligans - as the climb begins, the climb to the jump-point, the swaying of the cage as the crane pulls it up, the calm steadying influence of the jump-master (There is superb operational rigor here as well, more about this later) - is all pre-jump

(WOW - just thinking about it again makes my heart pound louder)

The experience post landing - congratulations from hugging friends, the satisfaction of another milestone completed, the thankfulness to the Lord for being alive, Pankaj - that was perfect, (One less thig to do before I die - were my exact words to W on getting the harness off) , the elation of having done something for the first time in your life - is all post-jump.

Then the main jump itself divides itself into two clean parts. The division is purely temporal - this division lends itself to beautiful division in terms of the dichotomy of feelings as well.

The division is thus - before the rope tautens (J1) and after the rope tautens (J2). In J1, you are flying - you can hear the wind in your ears, you are scared for your life - you don't know if the rope will hold. The ground hurries to you. You have maybe a split second to feel this part. You are not aware of your hands or your feet. You are not aware of your heart pounding in your ears. There is no trace of your last meal rushing up (actually, rushing down) your throat as you half-expected it to. No. None of this. Just the wind and the closing in earth. It is the first time you would have felt anything like this. There is fear. There is happiness. There is not many a thought in your mind - May be a taller bungee jump would give one more time for thought.

Then the rope tautens. This is a significant moment. Now you know for sure that the rope is secure. Irrespective of how much some one tells you and how many times you see others jump off, there is still that nagging 0.1% doubt in your mind. Will it really hold? What if I am the one person on which fate and equipment play cruel? But once you feel the first yank, you know that it holds. Now on it is moment after moment of up and down motion not too different from any other amusement park ride.

Or so you think.

One moment you see the sky, the next moment you see the ground. Sometimes you see the horizon. You lose sense of what is above and what is below. You try to find a point of reference which will hold still.So that you can anchor your mind, your sense of direction and orientation.

Unfortunately, there is none. Not one single goddamn point staying still in the whole wide world.

That is when you decide to let your brain stop trying to process the visual inputs and let your heart beat - extremely irregularly, at that - to the swings of the bungee