Rupa Mahanty with her instructor before jumping from a plane during skydiving in Texas.

Jamshedpur, Oct. 13: For this couple, the sky was literally the limit. And what better way could it have been to celebrate their marriage anniversary than to dive from a height of 12,500 ft.

Tata Steel executive Niroop Mahanty and his wife Rupa Mahanty did exactly that for celebrating their 25th marriage anniversary.

Skydiving, considered as an extremely dangerous sport, involves jumping out of an aircraft and falling towards the ground with deliberate delayed opening of the parachute and then landing at a designated spot. It is possible that this duo, who are also pilots, are the first Indian couple to have done free fall skydiving.

Recalling his experience during the free fall, Niroop Mahanty said the plane from which they jumped disappeared quickly from their sight after the jump. “I could feel the rush of air on my face. My body arched and the ground appeared larger at a rather alarming rate. The video guy hovers around you trying to get you to make nice smiling ‘photo’ faces, which Rupa managed rather well. But for me, I was waiting for the parachute to open.”

Mahanty said that when the parachute opened everything slowed down. There was no sense of movement and they were just suspended in space. “I was almost meditating, but my instructor got down to the business of teaching me how to steer the chute. Being a pilot, I did not find this difficult as the chute can be handled like a glider . Finally we landed on the field. Rupa followed me moments later with her instructor. She also does not have problems steering her chute.”

When the couple landed on the ground they ran towards each other, embraced and wished each other a happy anniversary. “This was a 25th anniversary present we had promised ourselves,” said Rupa Mohanty.

According to Rupa just before the free fall the weather had turned nasty with thunderstorms looming over the 300-acres of the Dallas Skydiving School. “But as they say in Texas, if you do not like the weather, wait for 10 minutes. And sure enough the skies cleared and we were asked to hurry and kit-up,” she said.

“It was Rupa’s idea. She had been parasailing in Phuket, enjoyed it, but found it too tame. She gave me the idea of skydiving and then followed the search for a suitable skydiving agency through the Net. One morning we were driven by our brother-in-law to Dallas Skydive, about 60 miles north of Plano, Texas, where we had gone on a family holiday. We agreed to take sky diving lessons from them,” said Niroop.

During the training the couple learnt how to exit from the aircraft, how to arch bodies during the free fall stage, how to manoeuvre the chute and finally how to land.

The free fall stage lasted for a minute (free fall till 4000 feet) and the maximum speed during the fall was 125 miles per hour. The fall with the parachute lasted for four minutes. The couple had initially jumped with an instructor and then alone.

The Mahantys have decided to go back next year and get themselves certified by the United States Parachutists Association. This would permit them to get into “formation flying”.