My first dive: a personal account

I learnt to swim at the Mahatma Gandhi Swimming pool in Dadar, and what I liked best there was going underwater. This was because the pool was always full, and the best way to avoid the crowd was going underwater. My diving in the swimming pool finally led me to the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) certified open sea scuba diving course at Netrani, Karnataka, in 2012.

It is a four-day course, and it starts off with you being taken to the pool wearing all the equipment, such as the compressed air cylinder, and diving glasses. You are given the signs and signals used to talk underwater, and you are taught about the most important thing: buoyancy. The art of floating underwater has to do with your breathing. Inhale and you go down, exhale and you go up; take slow breaths, and you will stay under for a long time.

We jumped into the swimming pool. It was a familiar place, and the sessions went by smoothly, because the fear of not being able to make it to the surface was wholly absent. But the next morning we were in a fisherman's boat, riding for over an hour until we reached the deep sea, our diving site.

As the boat stopped and the diving coordinator told us to buckle up, and help our diving partners to do so too, excitement and nervousness were written all over our faces. How many weights do you need in your belt, the coordinator asked me, and I said, "Four." The coordinator shouted, "Jump!", and I stood on the edge of the boat and jumped backwards. I was told to be near the anchor rope, which we would be following on the way down.

In the water, though, I was back up on the surface in a couple of seconds. My life jacket had inflated. Later three of my buddies jumped in, and then we deflated and sank.

That moment is among the most memorable; you are underwater, able to watch the sea bed, and the water is pressing on your eardrum.

How long you are able to stay underwater depends on how slowly you breathe from your oxygen cylinder, and whether you move slowly. It is here that the importance of a diving partner is felt the most. All around there is the deep sea, without markers of any sort. Without a partner you are simply direction-less. If anything happens, expect no help. Even when you have a diving partner, scuba diving is among the most adventurous sports. That is why one would not go scuba diving alone.

As soon as I descended, doing my exercises of blowing from the nose, flexing my neck right and left, I saw my coordinator coming up to me. In underwater language he asked me whether I was okay, and I replied yes. But because of his presence of mind, he inserted an extra weight in my belt and that helped me descend easily.

Around 18 meters underwater, the first thing I saw was sun rays piercing through from the surface. While exploring marine life, a small fish-- I could not figure out its size and distance underwater- came close to us. For a few seconds it floated right in front of us and then went away. As if it had registered its protest about our presence there, after which it simply did not care who we were.

The Netarani training centre, which has been now closed, has clear waters with a 10-metre visibility. I am told Netarani has better visibility than several diving sites in Goa.

As my air cylinder meter reached 40 percent, I signalled to my coordinator, rubbing my right palm on my neck. This indicated that I was nearly out of gas and it was time for the ascent.

Forty-five minutes into the dive, we slowly rose to the surface and inflated our jackets. We saw our boat far away, and our coordinator told us to swim to it.

That was my first open sea underwater dive, and as we swam back to the boat, my buddies and I kept shouting, hip hip hurray. I know it sounds silly, but once you have done scuba diving, you are left with a multitude of feelings: feeling blessed, feeling like a survivor, feeling like a winner, feeling respectful towards marine life. A sea of feelings.

(Mustafa Plumber, a principal correspondent with dna, is a PADI certified open-sea diver.)