Diplomas & Programmes in Hydrology

It is intense. You feel you are back in your mother's womb, a free-floating object protectively cushioned by fluids, savouring the stillness, the silence, the weightlessness...

These, ladies and gentlemen, are not the words of a lost soul tripping on a large dose of some particularly potent intoxicant, but Umeed Mistry's (graphic) description of an uneventful day at work.

The lucky man

A partner with Indian leisure diving company Lacadives, founded by adman Prahlad Kakkar, Mistry tends to get a little poetic (and sometimes philosophical) when talking about his job.

It was in Class X that Mistry got hooked to what was to become his passion and lead to a career. On a holiday to the Maldives, where he had just "intended to do a little bit of snorkelling", he signed up for the introductory diving classes at the restort where his family was staying.a

The first dive took him one metre down, and was meant to get him used to spending some time underwater and get comfortable with the SCUBA gear. What came next was strange. "We dived six metres and immediately I had a very strong connection. I felt this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was one of the most strong and life-changing experiences I had and everything I did revolved around it afterwards," says Mistry.

That essentially means he studied oceanography and marine biology in college and university and then started training as a diver, getting a CMAS one-star certification (beginner's level) in Maldives and then doing the CMAS two-star course with Lacadives at Kadmat in Lakshadweep before switching to PADI and completing a dive master's course in 2001-02 in Indonesia.