The Leap That Began With a Reminder

By Mukul Ronak Das

There is a moment in the Ramayana I return to more often than any other.

It is not the battle. It is not the burning of Lanka, or the fall of Ravana, or the victory India celebrates every Dussehra.

It is a quieter moment, on a beach, before any of that happened.

The search party has reached the southern edge of the land. In front of them is the ocean. Somewhere beyond it, a hundred yojanas away, is Lanka. And somewhere in Lanka is Sita.

One by one, the strongest in the group say what they can manage. One can leap ten yojanas. Another twenty. Another fifty. Jambavan, the eldest, says that in his youth he could have done it, but those years are behind him. Angada, the prince, believes he can reach Lanka but is not sure he can return.

Nobody can do the whole thing.

Through all of this, Hanuman sits apart. Silent. Not because he is afraid. Because he genuinely does not know what he is capable of.

The most powerful person on that shore had forgotten he could fly.

The reason is worth telling. As a child, Hanuman saw the rising sun and mistook it for a ripe fruit. He leapt into the sky to catch it. Later, his boundless energy disturbed the sages in their forest ashrams, and they placed a curse on him. He would forget his powers. He would remember them only when someone reminded him.

So he grew up strong, loyal and capable, and entirely unaware of the one thing that made him extraordinary.

Then Jambavan walks over and sits beside him.

He does not give Hanuman a new power. He does not train him. He does not hand him a tool. He simply tells him the truth about who he is. Son of the wind. The child who once leapt for the sun. The one for whom this ocean was never an obstacle.

And Hanuman remembers.

Valmiki describes what follows with remarkable physical detail. Hanuman grows. He climbs Mount Mahendra. He presses his feet into the mountain so hard that rocks split and the creatures living there flee. He fills his chest with air. He fixes his eyes on the horizon.

Then he leaps.

Nothing new was added. Something old was remembered.

I find this one of the most honest descriptions of human potential I have read anywhere.

Most of what holds people back is not the absence of ability. It is the absence of a reminder. The capability sits there for years, unused, because nobody has said out loud that it exists.

I have seen this play out in person more times than I can count.

Our first skydiving camp ran in Dhana, Madhya Pradesh, in October 2010. The same month India was celebrating Dussehra. People arrived with a familiar kind of hesitation. They wanted to fly. They had wanted it for years. But somewhere along the way, they had quietly concluded that it was not for people like them. Too risky. Too expensive. Too foreign.

What changed their minds was rarely information.

It was usually a person. An instructor who looked them in the eye during the briefing and said, calmly, you can do this. A friend who had jumped the day before. Someone who reminded them of what they already wanted.

Then they went up. And when they landed, the look on their faces was not the look of someone who had learned something new.

It was the look of someone who had remembered something.

Every great crossing needs two kinds of people

We tell the Hanuman story as the story of the one who leapt. That is fair. The leap is the spectacle.

But I have come to think Jambavan is the most underrated figure on that beach.

He did not cross the ocean. He could not. What he could do was see, before anyone else, what was possible. And he was willing to say it out loud at the exact moment it mattered. Without the one who saw, there would have been no leap.

Every great crossing in history has needed both. The one who leaps, and the one who believes in the leap before it happens.

India has always known it could fly

There is something fitting about this story in the context of what we are building.

Few civilisations carry the idea of flight as deeply as ours. Hanuman crossing the ocean. Jatayu fighting in the sky. Garuda carrying Vishnu. The Pushpaka Vimana bringing Rama home to Ayodhya. These are not obscure references. They are the stories Indian children grow up with. Flight is woven into how we imagine courage, devotion and homecoming.

And yet, for most Indians, the actual experience of human flight has remained out of reach. More than twenty million people around the world have flown inside vertical wind tunnels across dozens of countries.

India, a country that has dreamt of flight for three thousand years, is still waiting for its first tunnel.

Not because the desire is missing. The desire was always here.

What was missing was the reminder. The infrastructure that turns an old dream into a Saturday afternoon.

The ocean did not get smaller

Here is the part of the story I find most useful.

The ocean did not change between the moment Hanuman sat in silence and the moment he leapt. It was exactly as wide. Lanka was exactly as far.

What changed was what he believed about himself.

Dussehra celebrates the victory of good over evil. But every victory has a starting point that is easy to miss. Before the battle, before the bridge, before the army crossed, someone stood on a mountain and decided.

That decision is where every crossing begins.

This Dussehra, it is worth asking which oceans we have quietly decided are too wide. And who, around us, is waiting for someone to sit beside them and say: you were always able to do this.

Hanuman did not learn to fly that day.

He remembered.

So, I believe, will India.

Curious about indoor skydiving?

FLY Bharat is bringing India’s first premium indoor skydiving experience to Bengaluru. The first tunnel opens at PLaY Arena, a venue already welcoming 45,000 visitors every month.

If you are an enthusiast who wants to be among the first to fly in India, join the waitlist at waltairgroup.com.

If you are an investor interested in the India opportunity, the final round is currently open to a limited group. Write to us at mukul@waltairgroup.com or rajesh@waltairgroup.com, or schedule a conversation at calendar.app.google/fXrt1eQf6PhMSeDL8.

Explore more stories, insights and updates at Waltair Group.