Experiencing the ultimate

On 7th morning after breakfast, Bally and I met all the rest of the crowd. All from the army except one guy Jitin. met two other instructors Surya & Rana and 4 gurkhas from the SFF who were going to be the packers (the most important people in skydiving). After a brief introduction to each other and skydiving, they put us through the paces. A jog for a couple of kms and then different positions, rolls etc. All this to enable us to land well and not break a leg.
Just before lunch the Commandant of the BSF bn and a friend of mine, Raj Singh Rathore, dropped in to meet. He insisted that I shift to his guest rooms, so along with Bally I said OK.
After lunch the drills continued and we were introduced to the parachute and then some theory and problems of jumping. Finally by about 8 pm it got over and we got back to the guest room.
Gujarat is a dry state with no alcohol however thanks to the BSF there was no problem and we had a good drink, good meat and stumbled into bed in an alcoholic slumber.
Next morning the drills continued.We learnt how to position our self before the jump, the position on jumping, waiting 5 seconds, checking if the chute has deployed and then freeing the toggles to gain control of the chute and steer it. We also learnt how to steer it, turn it etc. and we repeatedly rehearsed how to open the reserve parachute in case the main didn't open or got tangled. Finally we tried it out sitting in a harness.

Here I started having a problem because of no fingers. Firstly, I couldn't get a proper grip on the cutaway chord to release the main chute in order to deploy the reserve and I couldn't get a proper grip on the toggles to steer. There was a good chance that on releasing the toggles they might blow away in the wind leaving me at the mercy of the winds completely. The problem of the cutaway was sorted out by me gripping the chord with both hands and releasing it, however despite lots of tries, I was not confident about the toggles. On that basis we went for lunch.
Over lunch I discussed the matter with Bally and we decided that the best bet would be to wrap the toggles around the wrist. Wing co Thapar had arrived by then and after discussing it with him we tried it out. It worked like a dream and all my confidence returned in spades.
The drills continued till late evening and meanwhile the other guys who had done the ground training in a'bad had arrived along with Raj Ahuja who was going to free fall. We finally returned to the guest room late evening calling Thapar and his son for dinner. The plan was to have an early night but by the time Thapar came along with Raj the mood was good, we were also joined by Raj Singh and by the time the evening ended everyone was in a alcoholic daze eagerly anticipating the jump the next day.