This was my first dive as a part
of my PADI certification. After having gone through theory lessons, clearing an
exam, clearing life skill tests in confined water, here I was – my first
certification dive. I was excited….
It is a cardinal rule of scuba
diving to swim against the current when you start a dive; that’s when you have
most energy. And then, you can lazily let the current do all the work when you
get back after the dive. I was busy scanning the water, hoping to get luck with
some manta ray spotting.
Just as we started to descend, the
waters became a little cloudy. No, not with sand from the seabed… But with…
wait for it…. JELLYFISH! I found a few beautiful jelly fish bobbing in the
water and deftly swam away from them. Then, one look ahead and the colour
drained off my face. There were atleast 200 of them, swimming with the current,
right towards us!
Our dive instructors took one
look at the jellyfish and announced that it was not poisonous. But, as in life,
everything comes with a caveat. They had tentacles that ran upto a metre in
length! That much venom could kill a dinosaur, maybe! “Remain calm!” was the
clarion call… You know this is like someone telling you – “Oh there is a tiger
charging at you. But don’t you worry, it doesn't have sharp teeth!”
With a heavy scuba suit and in
the midst of a current, it would be ages before we got to the boat and hauled
ourselves up to safety. We grimly looked at the entire school of them swim
towards us and started our futile swim towards the boat. It was only a matter
of physics before they caught up with us. Cursing relative velocity under my
breath, I realized what pathetic swimmers we humans are.
When the first sting landed on my
leg, there was piercing pain and I screamed out loud… The more you struggle,
the more the tentacle embeds itself in your body. It is so poignant that a
creature so beautiful can be that dangerous! Evil, pure evil. Kailash got one
on his face, and that is something that I don’t even want to think about! And
when the rest of them came, the profanities just kept getting worse. After the
ordeal, one of my co divers said, “When the lady went from saying s**t to f***,
we knew it was really bad!”
At the moment that I saw them
coming, suddenly, the aches and the pains vanished, the cribs seemed so
trivial, the number of zeros in the salary became a non-entity, and everything
else seemed so small. In the silence of the ocean, the only thing I heard was
the sound of my own heart, pounding. I remember feeling a little guilty that I hadn't yet found my calling in life and prayed ever so hard before being
engulfed. Talk about perspective; this incident cleared my head like nothing
else ever has, it was almost divine.
We got onto the safety of the
boat after what seemed like eternity. As our co-divers rushed to help us take
off tentacles hanging from our arms and legs, we both knew we were bloody lucky
to walk away from this with just some scars and painful pricks. You know, they say some experiences in life
change you. And more so, when such experiences happen at the hands of
nature.
We knew we had changed – forever.
