Pune’s 71-year-old writer-translator goes skydiving in America

Usha Mahajan

50 days shy of her 72nd birthday, Usha Mahajan struck off the gutsiest task on her bucket list — skydiving — as she jumped out of an airplane flying at 14,000 feet above Pittsburg, USA, on October 1. “It’s something I have been trying to do for nearly twelve years, but always put it off due to bad weather, or some other reason. But this time, I went to Pittsburgh to stay with my grand-niece, and she ensured I got to do it. The weather was great too!” she said.

An Aundh-based writer-translator, Mahajan has translated 14 books, including the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and Circle of Light, from English to Marathi. She is also a freelance writer for newspapers.

Given her track record with adventure, her latest escapade comes as no surprise: Mahajan had climbed over 1,200 steps at the Sigria rock fortress in Sri Lanka only last year and taken part in an undersea walk in Andaman a couple of years ago. All of this, following a spinal surgery from which she has fully recovered.

Thus, in the pink of health, she was given a clean chit to skydive despite her age. “As long as I could walk and pick my thighs up at a 90-degree angle in order to land properly, they had no problem with me doing it. Why, only a day before my dive, an 80-year-old had done the same. Mine was a tandem skydive, which means an instructor jumped with me,” she says, adding that the group she was part of was trained thoroughly, using state-of-the-art models and equipment before getting on the plane.

When asked about whether she was scared, her reply was instant; “No! I had been waiting for too long, and there wasn’t a second of nervousness or fear. Even at the final moment, when I had to jump off (you cannot skip a beat, and have to jump at a precise moment), I was calm. The 65-second free-fall was amazing, great, incredible — all the adjectives! The colours of the autumn made it all the more beautiful,” she said.