Ashutosh Chopra: Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: An Aviator’s Approach to Overcoming Adversity, Rebuilding Trust and Finding Joy in the Skies

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: So this is where I find it hard to draw a line that when do you give up or when do you learn to pull back in a sport like this which does not have a retirement age biologically because physically you can keep on competing at the high level up till quite a few years in your life. One fact is given at least I believe so and that is now there's fear in your

Aninder: mind. There is no option but that's the only option. Now what? So that fear needs to be handled. So now you have to sit down and think, what is this fear about? What can go wrong? Do I have a plan for what can go wrong? Or is there no plan? There may be some variables which can be handled by you, but some can't be handled by you. They're completely out of your control. For example, And the intention was to see at what speeds, what heights are you able to visually acquire certain kinds of terrain and targets and things. And I remember doing this flight with him lasting

nearly about one hour in which we were flying at about 500 feet AGL in the night, only some moonlight visible with mountains on both sides of us rising up nearly 15 to 18,000 feet above us. And...

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: What's up everyone welcome back to your weekly dose of awesomeness here at paragliding atlas podcast where we talk all things paragliding and today's episode happens to be one of its kind as you might have noticed that this intro is a little bit different than the other usual ones that we have in here for the episodes that we bring out to you every week however for this one something in me said that just let it be A talk so special that if it's meant to be, life will find a way to bring this content to your ears one way or the other. So without further ado, let's

dive right in and I hope you like it. Ajitosh, I want to start with the topic of aviation and humans. The wheel was invented as one of the very first modes of transport and then wing came along not so long ago. We have seen that wheel took its own time of evolution and helped people move. But wing has basically seen a rapid change in the way humans interact with their surroundings and within the last, I think, a span of less than 100 years. So what are your thoughts on wing, aerofoil and aviation in general to begin with? If my memory serves me right, aviation has been here for just about 115, 120 odd

Aninder: years. And that's...

The way we know it, in terms of fixed-wing flying and stuff. Balloons and things had been there earlier, but fixed-wing flying, we know it. And naturally, since everything is restricted to approximately 100 odd years, all the great leaps and bounds have taken place in a very short span of time with respect to humans that have been around. And one of the biggest reasons things have done so well is because of technology matching up with human aspiration. That technology itself has been made by humans. while aviation had been there to ease our problems, the aspect of aviation being something which could become a hobby, something that could enrich our lives by doing something of interest,

of course, even later in the process. As far as the difference between aerofoils and wings is primarily the fact that the wing is the full solid wing in three dimensions. But the airfoil is a two- dimensional representation of one section of the wing. So for prior cutting palettes to explain this, if you cut the wing from its leading edge to the trailing edge in one straight line, then what you would see in a 2D representation would be your airfoil. That section would change from one tip to the other. Of course, between the tip and the center of the wing and from the center wing to the other tip, they will be symmetrical, of course. Otherwise, you won't have the wing behaving properly. But the

airfoil section on the wing depends on what is required at that position. So that the requirement of the center is different, the requirement of the airfoils on the wingtip is different. They have different needs in terms of lift generation, in terms of weight management, in terms of efficiency, in terms of handling the vortices from the wing. And it's a really complex topic about how airfoils are designed. But even more interesting is when those airfoil sections are put together to make a 3D wing, things change completely. And the same wing with the same airfoil sections where it is in a smaller size, let's say in lesser square meters, behaves completely different from a wing

which is bigger, but just scaled up. Because scaling has a very powerful effect. on how the wing behaves in terms of its efficiency, the drag it creates, and the interference between different parts of the wing. Thank you for that simplest technical explanation. I think our

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: audiences have heard over a period of time on the show. But I want to backtrack our talk to the point in history when humans were fascinated with the art of levitation before we talk about the art of flight. As you said, balloons were one of the first ways humans started challenging the invisible force of gravity. and try to get away from it what is this fascination that we as humans have with lifting ourselves up in the air and discovering a whole different way of moving because we are land animals we are given legs and we can walk by birth that is a natural ability we can't fly by birth or swim These are aspects of life we discover as we grow older and develop our skills. You, as someone who has

been at the forefront of aviation in your life, what is your understanding of us getting so fascinated by the art of flight or art of levitation? I think you can understand this from two or three different points of view. The first big point of view is, of course, the view

Aninder: itself. If you're on the ground, you're limited to a certain distance. because of objects on the ground, trees, buildings, things like that. Even if you're in a desert or over the sea, you're limited by the visual horizon because of the curvature of the Earth. I don't know the exact figure, but if you were on the coast and looking into the sea, I don't think you can see more than about maybe 15 or 20 kilometers. That's the limit because then the Earth curves away. And even a ship which is going away from the shore will, after some time, disappear because it's gone around the curvature. Not normally seen, but I think the first thing would be that you go to a higher point, a vantage point to see more. In

fact, the first balloons that flew were used by armies as a visual outpost to look far behind enemy lines. That's one part. The second part is the freedom. When you're on the ground, one part of your body is anchored to a spot. The only time you can actually move in three dimensions is when you're airborne. You can move up, down, left, forward, back, in all directions. And in all planes of motion, you have six degrees of freedom. You have three degrees for rotation and three degrees for oscillatory, which you can't have on the ground. Which degrees did you mention? Six degrees of freedom. Three degrees of rotation about your X, Y, Z axis of the body. And along the same axis is

oscillatory motion. For example, you can rotate left and right. So in terms of paragliding, you're rolling left, rolling right. Similarly, pitching forward, pitching back. And yawing left, yawing right. These are all rotatory motions about each axis of the body. Similarly, you have prostrate motions. Going forward, going back. Going left, going right. Going up, going down. So these are prostrate motions. So with all of them put together, it becomes six degrees of freedom. Second is the feeling of motion in all dimensions. And I think the third is the most critical, and that is only God looks down, if you believe in God, looks down on us lowly human beings from above. And the fact that when you're

above looking down, it gives you a feeling that you're in the God's eye view, or let's say the bird's eye view of seeing everything from above. That's the next dimension. The last dimension is probably a dimension of the third one itself, and that is Your sphere of influence as a human being is a function of where you can reach. And actually, if you can fly, you can reach that far. And if you reach that far, that's your sphere of influence. If you play a game of football, your sphere of influence is limited to the football field. But if you fly, it's as far as you fly.

Those great pilots who do paragliding for 500, 600 kilometers, that's their sphere of influence. So that's the other dimension of flying. All of these combine to give you a sense of achievement, a feeling of greatness. When you add the sporting element to it, a degree of danger, which causes an adrenaline flow of dopamine, makes you feel good. And the endorphins flow, that's another dimension to the whole thing. I'm

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: smiling because you were finally able to put words to my feelings that I've always had. The six degrees of motion, the sphere of influence, these are things that I resonated with ever since I started flying. Because, of course, when you walk, your sphere of influence is limited, or you drive, it's again subjective. And the six degrees of motion took me by surprise when I entered the very first thermal in my life. And I don't know if I've spoken this about with a lot of people in my life before, but the very first thermal resulted in a mid-air. Not a catastrophic one, but just a wingtip brush. That was because I simply could not decode the six degrees of motion that quickly in its very first

instance. So I think you've explained it beautifully as an aviator. But if I have to... Tell our audiences a little bit about you, Ashutosh. Who are you and how did you manage to have the art of flight in your life so fulfillingly and so much of it? So I am from the background of aviation.

Aninder: My father was a fighter pilot and interestingly won the Guarantee Award in the 1965 war. He was one of my inspirations for joining the Air Force. As a child, I grew up reading comics called Commander Comics, which had aviators in them and stories about them. And there used to also be a book in which the chief hero was a chap called Biggles. He used to fly these old-time biplane-type aircrafts and he had these big adventures all over. So reading these books and comics, and with my father being in the Air Force, laid the ground for me to develop a very strong interest in flying. As a consequence of that, I joined the Air Force. I spent about 23 years in the Air Force. I was a fighter pilot. I primarily flew the

Jaguars and I was also a CAT-A qualified flying instructor in TACD, which is the Indian Top Gun School, where you learn to teach the art of air-to-air combat and air-to-ground firing and stuff like that. So I've seen all dimensions of flying within the Air Force. And after that, I chose to fly in the airlines and I was an airline pilot for 12 years. And of course, Somewhere down the line, after crossing the age of 50, me and my wife both decided to learn paragliding. And that added a new dimension of aviation into my life. I discovered, to my surprise, that paragliding was a lot different from fixed-wing flying. Whether it was a big airline or a fighter jet. For the perspective of my listeners, I

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: love bringing this number out. What's the amount of airtime you've had until now? About 4,000 hours of fighter flying. 8,000 plus hours of

Aninder: commercial airline flying, adding up to around 12,000 of extreme flying. My flying in paragliding has not been so much. I think maybe about 150, 170 hours somewhere there. Although I've been doing paragliding for slightly over 10 years, but with very low airtime in the first seven, eight years. It's only in the last two odd years that my airtime has improved a little bit. 40 years of staying in the sky and

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: 13,000 hours. What blows my mind is that 8 billion on the planet, very few of them get to even taste or try and see what being in the air feels like. And then out of them, there's even a smaller portion which gets to control an aircraft while doing so. The funnel keeps on getting narrower out of the ones who do it for pleasure, out of the ones who still find joy in it. And then I think there are less lucky few who get to fly paragliders. where they basically carry a backpack and chase the art of flight from wherever they can you seem to have combined all of this and

primarily the reason for that is that you like me and like a lot of our listeners who can also relate to this just find it quite addictive to be in the air if this is correct ashutosh have you been able to pinpoint why being in the air is so rewarding for some of us that just go all in and design our lives around it. There are three or four things to this. One thing is what actually makes you feel happy and satisfied, whether it is

Aninder: just the view of looking around. For example, to me, the view is very important. If I had a choice of flying somewhere, I would rather fly somewhere which is very scenic than just to be in there. For example, I might not enjoy flying if all I could see around me was an expanse of water or an expanse of a desert. So the varying terrain and scenery around has a critical importance to me. That's part one. Part two is that there is an element of involvement to a much greater degree because it is an extreme sport it is in sport where there's so many variables that you don't know

which variable can cause you to lose your life now whether that is something you factored in something you catered for or something that just happened one of those variables which you had no control over the fact that there are so many variables requires your attention it makes me be very careful With how I approach flying, it makes me, and that demand for being, keeping every nitty gritty parameter under check has a certain attractiveness to me. I like to be methodical about what I do. And it also has a charm because of the thrill involved, because there is this element that something is constantly changing around you and it requires you to constantly adapt to it. And that keeps your mind very

alive. So that being in the moment fact, because of the Constantly changing environment has another aspect to it. Yeah, the flow. That's another important part to the whole thing. And then you can add the element of challenge. For some, the challenge could be how long you stay born, how you make the best out of the smallest bit of lift. For some people, it could be how far you can go. So that constant challenge and living up to the challenge is another thing that I find attractiveness. And I think these three or four facts add up to what makes it interesting for me and keeps me engrossed. I want to quickly touch upon the excitement part of this. Traveling through the air at twice or thrice

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: the speed of sound when you fly a fighter jet and you have flown a British aerospace manufactured fighter jets Jaguars for quite a while and the possibilities are quite limitless when you fly a machine like that. Micrometeorology or turbulence Pretty much fly out of the window because you have such a powerful power plant basically taking you through the landscapes and making you cover great distances with minimal physical effort, I would say. Mentally, of course, you have to visualize your flight plan, but a lot of aids help you in doing that. And then you have a humble paraglider, which has a trim speed of 40 km per hour and takes quite a while for the scenery to pass by. The G-forces are quite

similar in both if you put these aircrafts in those configurations. So let's talk about the comparison of thrill. How does it differ? And what is the essence of thrill when flying a machine as powerful as a fighter jet and as humble as a collapsible paraglider made out of a simple piece of cloth? Okay, so first thing is that interestingly, even having flown a fast fighter jet, your appreciation of speed only happens when you're

Aninder: close to the ground. if you're in the air let's say you're at 15 20 000 feet agl and you could be flying at let's say 500 knots which is about let's say 900 950 kilometers per hour you don't really feel the speed until you either pass another slow moving object or static cloud or you're close to the ground then you can feel the speed till then you got the second part is about trust and the power of the engines You only really feel the power of the engines when you open power by a large amount. For example, you have your afterburners on and you release your brakes, then you can feel

the surge of power as the aircraft shoots forward. Or you're in the air and you engage afterburners and there's a nearly 50-60% increase in thrust suddenly. you can feel a sudden increase in power the second part about g-forces yes even in the parallel in rate you know three to four g is very easy and a fighter could generate maybe depending on the aircraft you're flying generate between seven to nine g on the aircraft you can't sustain those kind of g's without things like anti-g suit without doing certain breathing exercises tightening of your stomach muscles to prevent blood draining from your head and things like that You will, however, find that it is not actually only the g-forces which matter.

The rate of rotation on different axes also can play a role without having excessive g because, for example, we are good at handling g when the g is from your head towards your toes. The kind of g- force you would feel in a very tight turn in an aircraft or, let's say, in doing a loop. You may feel similar g's when you're doing a very tight spiral in a spiral glider. However, the kind of rotations which can actually make you more uncomfortable are when the G-forces are translated to left, right, forward, back, which a human body is not very good at handling. It can make you sick. Or rotations where, let's say, you have a yaw rotation of, let's say, 100 degrees or 60 degrees per second, which you may generate

in some kind of a spin in a paraglider. Normally, in most fixed wing aircrafts, you don't generate such large rates of yaw. It's only in some of the modern fighter planes which have thrust vectoring built in or with big canards or very large transitory motions. These have only come about in the last 15-20 years of flying. Other than that, rotatory and transitory motions in the pilot can be more different. You could make your 40 kilometers per hour paraglider very interesting. If, for example, flying close to a cliff with your wingtip a few inches away, that could give some people thrill. The new stuff like speed flying has given a lot of people thrill. I haven't done it, but I've seen a lot of

people with videos where they are doing really high speeds down a narrow canyon at a steep descent. That could add a very large amount of thrill and a feeling of speed, which may not be equated by a fixed wing flying in that kind of area. So basically the movement is the same in both of these

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: aircraft or the perception of movement when you're above or away from the ground. But it's just that close proximity to the terrain, it varies according to the aircraft's capabilities. But the thrill that the human body feels is pretty much comparable in both the aircrafts and that is in aviation in general, I would say. Is that the conclusion that we are looking at? Yes, to a large extent, yes. The proximity of the drone

Aninder: and for a sensation of speed, the increase in the risk and the increase in the thrill from the increase in risk, I think similar. Just out of

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: curiosity, I have to ask you one thing, Ashutosh. Does it ever make sense for acro paragliders to do their training with G-suits on if there is a way that the G-suits can be pre-pressurized? I know fighter aircraft has a system which keeps them insulated, but if we are able to develop something that keeps the blood flow in the axis that human body is most efficient in handling, are we at future looking at some pressurized clothing for acro paragliders in time to come See, it's like this. When you wear an anti-G suit, the tolerance to G is built up slowly. First part

Aninder: is how tight that G suit is already fitted to you. Most G suits are built so that you wear them fairly tight and then they have zips around them. When you pull the zip up, it tightens it even further. It becomes very restrictive to move with those zips in their drawn-up state. Such a tight suit in just the way it is can give you increased solvents of 1.5 or G. Then most ITG suits up to a certain degree depending on how much G the pilot is supposed to handle and the rate of onset of G. These two factors determine whether the ITG suit is inflated by air when the G is applied or

they are pre-inflated. So if a modern fighter aircraft is expected to very suddenly generate very high rates of G in such aircrafts, the anti-G suit would be pre-pressurized to a level where you're constantly under pressure or handling up to at least three to four G of G-forces at any time. Beyond that, any case, the suit would need to be inflated. So you not only need to wear a G-suit, you also need to have a system that can generate and push that air in at a certain rate. This, unfortunately, I don't foresee happening because it adds so much weight for the advantage gain that I don't foresee it happening. I can simplify this in the fact that compression clothing in sports is

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: becoming a norm. And I remember I was flying in German Open in Pushevo last year. And Honoren Hamad, for those of our audience members who are curious, he has remained as one of the world's foremost competition pilot for quite a while. And we have an episode with him in the early days of Paragliding Atlas. If you scroll up the index, you will see Honoren Hamad's talk. But I remember Honoren wearing calf compression on his legs when he landed. And the first thing that stuck my mind is that simply because of the fact that triple C pilots in a competition push speed bar so much that the calf muscles are probably being used quite often. That is the reason why he's wearing it. But if it increases the comfort level

and a G suit is too complicated for free flight pilots with respect to the modalities that you explained, Does it make sense to have some sort of compression clothing to enhance your performance or in general be more comfortable in the cockpit of a paraglider? Yes, compression clothing

Aninder: will help in many forms, preventing blood drainage. For example, even a crew who sit in long distance airline flights, you know, where they're flying for nine to 10 hours at a stretch, they wear compression socks to prevent the blood pooling into their feet and their feet swelling up and all that. But that's for slightly different reasons compared to handling G-forces. Insofar as handling G-forces is concerned, two other things can be done, which are also practiced by fighter pilots who handle high G-forces. It's called the Valsalva Mural, wherein you tighten your stomach muscles and your thigh muscles really hard with a sharp breath. that helps you improve your g tolerance and prevents

blood flow downward from your brain towards the lower parts of the body so that is something i can foresee may be helpful for aqua pirates tightening of the stomach muscles tightening of the thigh muscles and a little shout to help that tightening with the g tolerances once again as far as i know most g tolerances even in the I think actual maneuvers are mostly still along the z-axis, head to your toe. And for that you can do something. For all other g maneuvers which happen maybe in a twisting motion or a turning motion, may not be handled well even with all these maneuvers.

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: I think the fact this makes a man perfect is the definition that applies here. The more you expose yourself to such forces, the better equipped you are at it. And everything else that you can have is just modality or an extra option to help you be in control of your aircraft a bit better. But while we're talking about being in control of the aircraft and improving our handling, A topic comes to my mind that how do you maintain control of your life when you are so in love with aviation? Because I have seen quite a few people, maybe me also included up to a certain point,

where we do tend to go all in on something as rewarding as a passion. The reason why I'm choosing these words is because according to me, Passion is one of the only things that doesn't betray. It is something in life that keeps on giving the more you put into it. But at a certain time, too much of everything is bad. There's no rocket science to that statement. So do you have any thoughts on finding a balance between staying in control of your passion while chasing aviation, which is highly addictive because of all the things that we spoke about in the first part of the show, and yet figuring out to still have a meaningful life when you're on the ground, which is anyhow majority of the time, regardless

of how hard you chase airtime. Okay, that's interesting. Take this. It depends what are you doing when you're not piloting. So for those of us

Aninder: who are in another profession, you will find normally speaking if it's fixed kind of job you will on the average be devoting six to eight hours towards your work if you are sleeping the same amount let's say six to eight hours in a day which is what most people would be sleeping that's two-thirds of your day gone you need another half of that what's left for handling even mandatory things like taking a shower eating food doing regular stuff But it actually leaves you very little to do other than that, in a day on which you're working. Either your passion then becomes limited to the days you have off your holidays, in which case it's not a problem of balancing because a holiday is meant to do what you want to do

and meant to do your hobbies, your sports and take care of your passions. And the issue of balance comes when the subject of paragliding takes so much of your mind and attention that when you're at work your mind now deviates towards your passion or you're doing everything at the time which is free which is the world towards your passion for example you're multitasking you're reading a book about paragliding when you're eating food and if you have a companion sitting with you probably to use that time at dinner to talk and discuss things. And if you're reading a book on piloting, naturally it's going to become a board of contention between the two of you. So if you're alone and you're by yourself, what

you do with your time is completely decided by you. But if you share life with somebody, You have a partner or you're married, you have children or you have your parents with you sometimes. And the question is, are you reasonable when you have responsibilities and when you have other people in your lives that have to have some time devoted to them? Are you reasonable with the amount of time you give to your support and passion? That's such an individual choice. I don't think anybody can take a decision for anybody else. 100%. We all do have to find answers to these

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: questions within ourselves. But I still want to get a bit more clarity on this because this is such a big gray area for a lot of pilots out there. And let's try and include the world class, like the Mamba mentality, the Kobe Bryant's or the LeBron's or the ones who reach the pinnacle, the creme de la creme, top of perfection, those guys repeatedly come out and say passion is not enough, obsession is a necessity if you have to be one of the top ones. At the same time, too much of everything is bad. You have to find a balance, otherwise you will feel the burnout. You will end up

losing interest. So this is where I find it hard to draw a line that when do you give up or when do you learn to pull back in a sport like this, which does not have a retirement age biologically, because physically you can keep on competing at a high level up to quite a few years in your life.

Aninder: One fact is a given, at least I believe so, and that is You cannot become good at something by giving it cursory attention. If you take the examples of people who have been playing music instruments who have become big in their time. If you look at their history, the word was practice. When they were being taught by their gurus, they would spend 12 to 16 hours a day. Other than having a bath or eating their meals, they would be doing nothing but under the constant attention of their gurus, practicing, practicing till they became perfect. I don't think that it is possible to become good at something, really good at the really good standards of stuff, unless you devote a lot of time and attention to it.

If something is to remain a part-time hobby for you, where you do not have aspirations of achieving great pinnacles, You could get away without having spent so much time. But if you really want to do well at it, there is no option but to devote time to it. The question is, does it become an obsession? Or does it remain a focused approach to something without it becoming something in which you're behaving like a maniac? Once again, the seed is always there. It's difficult to draw a very fine line that at one end of the border, You are being focused and working hard. In the other case, you become so obsessed that you are now losing control over your life and your energies and your drive by this aspect. Once again, a

very personal thing. Imagine the amount of time an astronaut, somebody who's actually gone to space, how much time they have spent in the ground. You look at the first few guys, the Apollo fellows, Neil Armstrong and Buzz, and these guys have spent years Two to three years, four years of 10 hours a day working at something which is a one-time event of going to space. A lot of hard work. A lot of hard work. It's not seen. It's all behind the lines. Those guys who achieve big feats, some of the stuff that they do themselves, they may not admit how much effort has actually gone in. A lot more than what is visible, actually. So to conclude this, it's basically look at how bad you want it and then look at

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: how bad can you actually want it considering your realities. Yes. You draw the line between risk and reward. If you find that your so-called

Aninder: drive is taking a bend when your own life doesn't matter to you and you are ready to risk it beyond a certain point, especially considering the number of variables that are beyond your control. It's a really tough call. I love the finishing touch that you gave on there because I think

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: that will answer a lot of curiosities for everybody who's going ahead into any passion or any meaning in their life. But while we are talking about this, something comes to my mind and that is team sports and individual sports are something that are same but different for all humans and paragliding can be considered as a team sport, but at the end, it is simply an individual sport when it comes to controlling your aircraft and making decisions in the air. Does a person need to focus on finding a team or a tribe? Or is it that you will have to find your own motivation and stick to it? So support system, how and when does one identify a need for it? And if yes, then how do you start working towards

it? Different sports have different support systems. And in terms of baggling, it all boils down to two or three different aspects. Firstly,

Aninder: if you're in the sport for the fun and excitement, then just the camaraderie is good enough for the time spent hanging around on the ground before you fly, after you land. In any paragliding site, you'll find there'll be a place where people will hang out before the flight. You may know that the first takeoff window is at about let's say 11 o'clock in the morning and you don't need more than let's say half an hour 45 minutes to go up there assess the weather get your gear in order before you take off but people still go up at 8 39 and you see them hanging around

at the local restaurant or tea shop knowing jolly well that they're going to do nothing for the next two hours before they fly and interestingly that discussion they have there only 10 to 15 percent of it may relate to And maybe otherwise just general banter. But people do it and they do it regularly. So it indicates that there's a lot more to something where there's a support system per se from the point of view of learning. That I'm going to go there and I'm going to meet a bunch of people and we will have discussions on subjects in which I will learn from them. And it happens in the flow of the general banter, that kind of thing. If you want a support group which is focused for improving your

flying, for improving your knowledge of the sport, then there are many other ways to do it. And it doesn't stem from something like this. Let's

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: say when we have figured out a comfort zone where we are able to bring our troubles and triumphs to a certain set of people, which is going to take a lot of trust and energy to reach A place in life where you trust someone, that you give them a lead in things which matter to you in the most intimate manner. Identification of a toxic relationship or ground suck as we call it in paragliding, especially when you're new, especially when you're still in the early hours of your airtime. how do you identify ground suck because i can tell you from my own experience i have trusted instructors which were not worth being given an instructor's license a lot of that was in my early few hours because you

have just discovered this brand new fascination that somebody's saying hey i'm professional in this pay me and i'll give you the feelings that you're looking for And of course, the vulnerabilities are quite high. But still, if you have to identify toxic relationships in these support groups, what's your way? What are your thoughts on that? And how does one basically avoid the pitfalls that are in those pathways?

Aninder: Interestingly, I'll bring you something from my experiences of doing a lot of tricking and climbing in the past. And I always say that if you want to see how good a person is, you should take him along on a nice, long, difficult trek. You will get to understand what kind of person he is because when you're in trouble together and the hardships are present at all times, you will see a person in true light. So physical stress, mental stress, and for prolonged periods actually bring out the worst in you. And it's at that time you'll understand the true nativities of what a person is all about. So there may be a lot of people who may be knowledgeable, who may be good players and pilots themselves, but they

may not make good teachers. Because teaching itself is an art. The ability to judge what mistake a person is making And to be able to analyze it to the extent of being able to give you ready-to-action statements to fix that problem, that is a big art. Anybody can tell you, oh, your lighting technique is not good. You're flaring high. But can someone tell you, why are you flaring high? Why? You're flaring high. It's a mistake. Fix it. Don't flare high. Flare low. Or flare the right height. But why would you be making that mistake? That's where a good instructor will come in. He will tell you, listen, you're making this mistake because of this and this reason. In order not to do this, you should do

Aninder: concrete steps, A, B, C, and D. Actionable steps. So this art of being able to pinpoint why you're doing something and how to fix it is a critical part. You may not be able to realize this as an amateur pilot. So you have no option but to take other people's inputs. What we tend to do in the modern world is look at Instagram clips by people or video by people or to say, oh, this person is a very knowledgeable person. Like I said, being knowledgeable or being a good pilot, you may not be a good instructor. That's an important thing to understand. Once you do understand that there is a problem in a particular person with whom you are with, nothing prevents you from pulling away and finding somebody

else to teach him or somebody else to be with whom you're more comfortable or you would learn better with. The teacher could be good or the student could be good, but they may not be good together. Let's say you as a student don't learn well unless somebody really hammers something down your head. And here's a teacher who's very meek who refuses to do that. Or the other way around. The teacher is extremely violent in teaching, shouting and screaming at you. And you're a meek person. You don't like somebody who is voicing, teaching you. And then there's a conversation you both feel, despite being good I love the way you put it. It's very clear. And I think this is another one of those

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: questions which people will have to find an answer themselves, which is a bit difficult in the beginning of your career because you're still learning the tricks of the trade. But eventually, learning to question your instructors and seeing their replies is what will probably give you balanced ground to stand on and then take your decisions from there on. One thing I can argue is something that will indicate that

Aninder: everything is okay. And that is when somebody is ready to teach you and give you all his knowledge and all that he's learned from his experience without holding anything back. Let's assume that on a particular subject, I know 10 things as bits and pieces of knowledge and 10 experiences I've had, people can learn something about that particular topic. I want to teach you only four and withhold six. from either lot then there's a problem the question is are you able to discern that you'll be given only six out of ten and not the whole ten that's part one that you could make out because you had a discussion or topic in which you already knew a lot and you wanted to check if this person is passing on

that information to you or not And the other one is that you can make out by his mannerisms and body language that he's hiding something because he wants to say something and he's holding himself or she wants to say something, he's holding something back. And if you're a good human observer, these things do become visible after a certain amount of time. Let's try and look at it from the perspective of the instructors

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: who don't want to share everything just for the sake of it. Let's put ourselves in their shoes. Where this person is like, if I open all my cards in the beginning, then I am losing out on money that is coming on later. I understand a lot of this can be blamed on capitalism, that I have to make money in a capitalist society and I can't give them all the knowledge for whatever amount they have agreed on. Does it make sense to give a person only module one when the person wants all three modules in a go, for example, from the instructor's point of view, purely because of

monetary benefit? So it's definitely a monetary issue. How long can you be in a position where you need the instructor to constantly pay money

Aninder: for learning something? And there, as long as you're holding things back, I don't blame somebody for making money. But the thing is, if you're upfront about it, if you admit, listen, there are only 10 maneuvers in this heavy course, I've got to make it to only two. And therefore I'll charge one fifth, then that's fine. But if you're charging the same amount and then not doing it, then I think ethically it's incorrect. I think ethics, of course, is coming from the point of a seller who's selling it. But we are circling back to the analogy that you

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: made in the beginning that see how willing the person is to share. Or maybe I think you mentioned his body language because you can judge a lot from that and identify behavior from the way they behave and the way they're trying to sell you the product. or even a web shop for that matter, the information on the web shop, how transparent it is. Once you try and read it, once you dig deep into it, you will see these small hints here and there, which give you enough clues to make a wise decision. And I have been on the end. where I haven't made very wise decisions. So that's

why I just made it a point that every time I get a chance, I speak about this to my audiences that it's very difficult to find a sweet spot where you don't offend them yet. You try and understand how much you can trust them because they're obviously more senior, more airtime, more legacy factor than you. But at the same time, you are trusting them with your very lives and something that means to you more than anything else in the passionate form. But I think we have wrapped up this pretty comprehensively, unless you want to add a few more things before we move on to the next one. The only thing I can say as an addition is that when you're completely a newcomer, starting a new avenue show, you're

Aninder: likely to make a mistake and there's no way out of it. The only way you can avoid it is if you consult a lot of people before you get into the business. But don't overdo your stay with one particular person. Let's assume you know that this person is a good instructor. Spend some time. Learn something. Take a short break. Go to another instructor. Learn something from his point of view, from the angle that he looks at things. Right? Spend a little bit time there. Go to another instructor. Learn something. People give you inputs from different directions with different mindsets. Then you learn from that difference. Then you can choose this person. I need to be handled like this. So therefore, I think

this combination of instructor and me will do the best and come to that. That, of course, may take time. It won't happen overnight. It may take a year and a half. But even that's not too long in a professional sport that you could have been for a long time. Testing the waters before you drink

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: them is the key here. It's as simple as that. Yeah. Hi, Sush. This is a little bit of a difficult topic. We all have our own challenges and adversity comes in various forms for everyone. I remember, I think a couple of years ago, there was an incident with you that was quite difficult for me to digest as an audience because I had only known you for a couple of days by then. And I was just in shock how to process it or even try and have a word with you about it, which is why I just stayed silent for a few months. But dealing with adversities and setbacks in aviation

specifically and in something that means so much, what's the blueprint and how to go about it? Okay, so one thing is like this. I'm a military

Aninder: pilot. I've been in the Air Force for a long time. I understand what the environment is all about, and I've seen it from very close. I've seen a lot of accidents taking place in the Air Force. I have seen two aircrafts go down into the ground with the pilot inside, ending up in fireballs in front of my eyes, in very close proximity. And that has a very powerful effect on me. and to understand and bear that knowing that somebody has lost his legs in the big fireball in front has a very strong powerful effect and it makes you learn so it has and it has a way of molding your

attitude toward what you're doing in my case that what you mentioned was me losing my wife last year in a targeting accident she was reasonably experienced by getting with about the same amount of flying experience that i had She had a very bad collapse in Bir, which resulted in her hitting the ground and as a consequence, she passed away. It happened in front of me. I was very close to her when this happened. And the ridge on which she had gone down was a pretty steep ridge and pretty sharp on its sides and the upper parts. It's the ridge which people call the golf course ridge. The area lower down the ridge where people do top land and they hang around there. It happened much higher up on the same ridge at a

place where the ridge was rocky. When this happened, we were talking about how to handle something like this. I was initially completely aghast in seeing the glider go down. And initially, I made a lot of calls on the radio. I started flying towards where she was. Not very far. Maybe about 800 meters to a kilometer. I came closer to where she was. I gave a lot of calls. There was no response on the radio by anybody. So my initial instinct was I should go land. I said, no, hold on. Let's assume I mess up my landing. I break a leg. My wife is there. I haven't reached. Nobody is

responding on the radio. Nobody knows that she's down because otherwise somebody would have responded. Now I go down. And I break a leg. And now we're going to have an emergency. Two people have crashed in the mountain. Nobody knows where they are. Presumably when I crash, I'm still conscious and I can use the radio and shout that I have a broken leg and my wife is higher up in the mountain and needs rescuing or whatever. I said, no, it doesn't make sense. It's only after somebody responded, another senior pilot, another two pilots came and landed at Gulf Coast Point on the ridge is when I attempted to land there and land there. And then, of course, we all ran up. Another senior pilot, a lot more

experienced than all of us, landed at a slightly higher point and managed to reach my wife first. And we landed up there. It was already too late. She had died from that crash because she went straight into a rock. And that caused her death. Now, the point is, what do you do after something like this has happened? You're losing somebody close in your family. But there's another dimension to this is that I fly. Our son also flies. And I know I can't remove evasion from my life. I can't remove bad reading from my life. And most in respect of her having lost her life, being the same. And I don't want this to become a constant fear for my son, for him to ever develop a state wherein he gives up on such a rewarding and

Aninder: nice sport. So I said the only way to handle this is to get back in the air. And I must do it while my son is still there. So I think within about two weeks of the incident i told my son monday i think i'm gonna go fly and he didn't say anything he didn't try and stop me or anything so i went up and did a flight i didn't fly too long it was nearly a top-down flight from takeoff to landing by about 15-20 minutes i could sense the apprehension within my body i would keep turning and looking towards the place where she had gone down into the ground And it definitely was, I

wouldn't say stressful, but it really blew my attention away from the actual act of flying. And I realized that this is disconcerting. But you can't run away from your fears. If you have a fear, you have to learn to handle it. And you have to take it head on. Otherwise, that small fear will become into a monster and become something that will prevent you from doing anything in life. So I knew I had to get back to it. Slowly, I started flying more and more. Even though I was doing pretty long flights earlier, I went back to becoming a beginner. First, I think six or seven flights only, just top down. By the sixth or seventh flight, I went to the same golf course region. Maybe the 10th or 15th flight, I went

one more reach beyond that to progressively build up my mindset. The probability of the same thing happening immediately in the same area is very remote. Most of the fears are irrational, actually speaking. But yet they are there and they need to be handled. They need to be handled in a manner and to address it in bits and pieces rather than, come on, let's get in there and do something. That's how you handle this sort of thing. I

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: wish I could show the amount of strength that is there on your face while speaking about this, Ashutosh. Massive thanks for being so unfiltered and honest about this. It takes a lot of courage. revisit those memories and bring out your new perspective on it. More power to you, sir. You are an inspiration to say the least. And I'm pretty sure a lot of people in our audiences can also resonate to this. Keep rocking, man. Keep rocking. The world needs more people like you. Thanks. One thing I've heard about, but please correct me if I'm wrong, is that in a squadron of fighter jets, if unfortunately one flyer goes down and does not come back, the whole squadron flies the very next day. Why is this? And what is

the benefit of doing this? Actually, it's exactly the same as what I did. Like I told you that within 10 days of me losing my wife in that piloting

Aninder: accident, I went back into the air. It went up to 10 days because I had to go away to Delhi. Because I came back to be 10 days later is the reason there was a delay. If I was going to be in Bir and all activities concerning bus or passing away were to happen in Bir, I would have probably flown the very next day. Providing that there was time to do so between all the events and activities. The faster the better. In my case, if I decide not to pilot, you don't pilot. End of story. But pilot pilots don't have the option. You are a part of the Air Force. You know that tomorrow you're

going to go to war. You know that every time you see somebody going down and dying, which could happen every day in the war, multiple people could be losing their lives in one day. You can't just say, I won't fly. Then you would face being charged with cowardice and maybe forbutanous action. That's not acceptable for your line of duty. So that's done. We have done it too when I was in the Air Force. When it's happened, something like this, you fly. There is no stopping. And you shouldn't either. Like I said, you don't want that thing that was a small bit of fear now turn its head and turn into a monster. And which it will. It becomes such a mental block that it's impossible to get out of. So the faster it's

handled, the better. But remember, when handling it, it should be done in pieces. Don't do something stupid. Try to do something when your mind is affected. And you know that you're not giving your mind 100% when trying to handle something like this. To sum it up, it's basically make a

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: plan in cool minds and then make sure you act on it. Because the longer you sit with the emotion, the worse it's going to get, the harder it's going to get to come out of it. So make a plan, act on it, and then life starts getting better. Handling fear is a big topic by itself. Interestingly,

Aninder: sure, handling fear is very individual. The only thing I can say about being generic is to ask yourself, is this fear grounded? Or is this fear irrational? If the fear is irrational, then there's a big problem because that means your mind is not straight. You need to get your mind straight. If the fear is rational, For example, somebody tells you, listen, take this diagram, right? And we're going to break three of the lines and now you go fly. And now you have fear. That's very rational fear, yeah? Because the probability of something going wrong has increased so much. Now the question is, what if you have to do it? For example, you crash landed somewhere. You broke those lines, all right?

And those lines tore in a manner that they cannot be repaired. For example, they tore in multiple pieces and joining them together doesn't work or the fabric itself is torn. And you're stranded from somewhere where you cannot walk down. There's no option but to take off and get everyone back from there. So now you have no option but to fly that glider. Now there's fear in your mind. There is no option, but that's the only option. Now what? So now that fear needs to be handled. So now you have to sit down and think. What is this fear about? What can go wrong? Do I have a plan for what can go wrong? Or is there no plan? There may be some variables which can be handled by you, but some cannot be handled by you.

They're completely out of your control. For example, there's a tear in the fabric, right? And the tear is at a point where some portion is torn and the tear cannot possibly extend any further. Quantified problem. This is what's going to happen. It won't tear any further. But if the tear is such a magnitude, the moment the glider gets loaded with your weight, it's going to rip another two feet. You've got a problem that you have no answer for. You don't have any control on the tearing or non-tearing of the fabric at that point. When you need to handle these pairs, you need to think very carefully. of the variables in control and the variables completely outside of control and decide whether your fear is

reasonable. A little bit fear, of course, always good. It keeps you alive. I love the way you put it, Ashutosh. Any one of our audiences who is

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: finding this meaningful, go ahead, hit that rewind button for 15 seconds or 20 seconds. Listen to it all over again, because this is pure gold. As you said, not a lot of people are willing to share it or in the most efficient manner, which is understandable. So identifying your reality and then making a plan out of it as a way to move forward in life. I think that is a simple conclusion in here. It reminds me of an incident in Bede. There was a fighter jet pilot flying his paraglider in the Black Mountains and he trash landed there, had to survive out in the wilderness for almost one week in a row. But of course, military training, they figure out how to survive better than civilians and

whatever willpower to live. But by the time the rescuers found him, he was actually planning to take off with a glider that was very difficult to fly. That's why I was able to match it with your description. He had quite a few fractures. He had a broken back. Walking out was not an option. The glider was damaged. But flying out was the only survival option for him after waiting for rescue for seven days. Eventually they found him. But that's a whole different story for a new show because in process of finding him, one person lost his life in the rescue effort. But yeah, deep talks, Ashutosh. I think we have come across a whole circle starting from why aviation matters the most and how to make sure

it still matters the most regardless of what comes in your life. I think Before we close, I usually have a tradition on my show where I ask my guests to share one flight. And with you, it's a privilege because you have had 14,000 hours in various aircrafts at various altitudes in atmosphere and stratosphere. I don't know. Did you go to ionosphere as well? I was flying what was called the mud mover. I spent most of my time

Aninder: hugging the ground. I think that's where the most excitement is, right? Low flying aircraft, so most of the flying was below 300 feet. Ah, damn,

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: that is what, 100 meters or what, 70 meters? How much is that in meters? I think nearly 80-85% of the flying was below 300 feet. Are you kidding me? That is exciting. Did you ever break the sonic boom at that level? Yeah, but in the air you don't hear anything. Just a minor move of the aircraft,

Aninder: that's it, nothing. Let's talk about the animals on the ground. They must be feeling the wrath of your afterbites. If you hear a sonic boom, it's really loud. It can shake you up. It can shadow windows depending on which part of the sonic boom you're in. Are you allowed to break sonic

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: boom that low? There are certain profiles where you would do it. But for doing that, there are certain specified areas. So when you go sonic or

Aninder: supersonic, The shockwave doesn't hit people's houses and creates a lot of racket. It can be disconcerting, you know. But Ashutosh, one

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: flight that has stuck with you until now and the reason behind it. I've had many interesting flights. Some had scary aspects and some were not.

Aninder: But I think one flight from my Air Force days, which I'll never forget, was during the Gargoyle War. which took place in the mountains in Kashmir. For our international audience, this is a small conflict that happened in a region. Small for the world, but fairly large for the ones

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: involved in it. But this was a skirmish, or you can say a war. I don't think skirmish is the right way to put it in respect to armies that fought from both ends of the countries. But yeah, this is something that the subcontinent saw back in two decades, I think. But yeah, please continue, Ashutosh. All of a sudden it became quite apparent that some areas we had not been paying much attention to, all the mountains up

Aninder: north and the valleys there, we hadn't been flying inside them deep enough to handle targets which are very small, very obscure, not easy to visually spot. Not only that by day, but by night. I remember doing this very interesting profile with my commanding officer. Two of us went and did this at night. And we went through these valleys at low level. We didn't have any night vision goggles, no infrared pods, forward-looking infrared pods and things like that to guide us. And this entire flying was done visual. And the intention was to see at what speeds, what heights are you able to visually acquire certain kinds of terrain and targets and things. And I remember doing this flight with

him lasting nearly about one hour in which we were flying at about 500 feet agile in the night only some moonlight visible with mountains on both sides of us rising up nearly 15 to 18 000 feet above us and we were following the contour of the valley the two of us i could only see his auntie called once in a while in front of me A very harrowing flight, visually avoiding terrain, flying nearly a thousand kilometers per hour, close to the ground at night, you know, constantly whipping the aircraft left, whipping the aircraft right, no infrared, no nothing. That was quite an interesting fight for me as far as fighter flying is concerned. And I think as far as paragliding is concerned, an

interesting fight would be the fact that in the last four flights that me and my wife flew together, I flew in formation with her. We would catch up over the landing ground. I would fly with her in what would be called an echelon position. We were slightly offset to one side and slightly behind at an angle of about 30 degrees. And all these four flights, I flew with her for about 10 to 15 minutes, holding that position while she was just flying around and I would just hold position and fly around. And we did that formation flying for her last four flights. So that's the interesting thing I remember from flying with her.

Identifying Passion Vs Obsession: I think proximity flying and wingmanning in general, it's mesmerizing. Sharing the joy with another human that understands it the same way is quite exceptional. And you seem to have lived quite a fulfilling life in aviation, Ashutosh. Yeah, man, I'm just short for words. I don't know. It's just nice talking to you about these things. And this is something that I wanted. to do for so long. For our audiences who don't know, Ashutosh also happens to be a mentor for me here at Paragliding Atlas and is a big force behind what is coming to you in the show. And so needless to say, I think there's endless ways we can keep this episode going, but I would love to bring out more awesomeness with

you in tandem and in formation flying, in wingmanning, and in podcasting, in whichever way possible. But for now, I think we have hit the nail on the head for what we planned for. Thank you so much, Ashutosh. Thank you so much for having me on your show and I wish my very artists all

Aninder: the best with you leading in front, with more discussion with people coming up, with for the whole community in general for the camaraderie of yeah,