It’s a high to do extreme sports: Rubina Dilaik

The Shakti actor talks about her first-time experience of scuba diving and skydiving recently, and how she is falling in love with extreme sports.

“I have aquaphobia. I am amazed that I was able to scuba dive,” says Rubina Dilaik, who tried scuba diving for the first time in Thailand recently. She says, “I was apprehensive but Abhinav (Shukla, actor and her boyfriend) persuaded me ,and I was in the water for one hour before we went diving. I got comfortable with the motion of the ocean as swimming in a pool is different from being in the ocean. Once I did it, it was exhilarating.” Rubina and Abhinav went to Thailand with a group of 21 friends to celebrate actor Hussain (Kuwajerwala) and another friend’s 40th birthday.

Rubina says doing extreme sports is overwhelming.

“I stayed close to the surface, then went five metres in the water. After a few minutes, we dove to 10 metres and gradually kept increasing the distance. My fears vanished slowly and soon I was engrossed in the beauty undersea. It was overwhelming and I was [living] in the moment. I wasn’t thinking of anything, it felt so pure. The breathing technique, which I learnt in yoga helped me calm my mind. There is a pattern to breathing underwater while carrying an oxygen tank,” says the actor, who went diving again the next day to enjoy the experience without any fears.

Abhinav also pushed her to sky dive in October. Rubina says that he has brought out the adventurous streak in her. “If it were not for him, I wouldn’t have had these experiences in my life. Now, I am an adventure junkie. For sky diving, I was thrilled about coming down in a parachute but didn’t think about the weightlessness or free fall that I would experience.”

Rubina got cold feet when they were in the air. She knew she was scared of water but never realised that she would need to prepare herself for a 15,000ft jump. “I thought it would be cool and easy as I was going tandem, but it was not. I didn’t want to regret not jumping, so I did. I calmed my mind but when they opened the exit, I had tears in my eyes as I thought this would be the end for me. I jumped though it was scary for the first five seconds and then it was wonderful. During the fall, there was an adrenaline rush from my head to toe (laughs),” she says.

Rubina says now she understands why “people are so crazy about extreme sports”. “The rush is such a high that you want to experience it again,” she says. Though the actor didn’t have any side effects from diving in the ocean, after a few days, she felt lethargic and had a “jet lag feeling”. “People never think about the toll it takes on your body as your body is not used to being in such a pressurised environment,” she explains.

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