“The ocean makes me feel like I belong there. I feel the closest to myself when I am underwater,” said Smruti Mirani, a trailblazing freediver who is also the first Indian woman to dive over 40 m underwater. “Everyone tells me that the smile I hold when I am with the ocean is infectious,” Mirani added.
Her affinity towards water goes back to her childhood days when she would be the first one to enter the ocean and the last one to exit it. “I remember, in 2010 when I experienced scuba diving for the first time during a family trip to the Andamans, I signalled the instructor that I wanted to go deeper,” Mirani recalled while talking to Outlook Traveller. She mentioned that the ease she felt was quite against what everyone else experienced.
Eight years later, she arrived in Chennai in 2019 to undertake her first open water scuba diving course. Later that year, Mirani scuba dived at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia where she also completed her advanced open water course in scuba diving.
It was only in 2022, as Mirani puts it, that “freediving found her” while she was on a long trip to the Andamans. Being an IIT graduate, Mirani was working remotely on this holiday, all while chasing turtles underwater. “On that trip something in me shifted and I was convinced that I wanted to take up freediving as a profession,” she reminisces.
Freediving, an adventure sport, requires you to hold your breath underwater without any breathing apparatus. You could be deep diving or just swimming in water. The sport requires immense mental and emotional strength. One is required to train their breath-holding capacity, and master relaxation and equalisation techniques.
After achieving these, freediving begins to feel blissful and effortless. Mirani suggested that one should never try freediving without enough professional training or without a trained freediving buddy.
According to Mirani, the Blue Hole in Egypt, Panglao Island in Philippines, and Jemeluk Bay in Amed, Bali are suitable for freediving. In India, the Bhogwe beach in Sindhudurg, beaches in Goa, and the Andamans are some other destinations where one can attempt the sport.
Soon after Mirani realised that freediving was something much more than a hobby. And so, in August 2022, she enrolled in a level 1 professional freediving course in Malta. “I was hanging 15 m underwater with great comfort,” she says with a smile.
There was no stopping now. In November 2022, she finished her level 2 course near Racha Islands in Thailand, where she touched the 30 m mark underwater. The happiness, though, didn't last long.
“The journey from 30 m underwater to touching over 40 m was fraught with challenges,” Mirani said as her smile dropped.
She learned that being underwater and near the ocean would wash her with a sense of anxiety—a feeling that was rooted in an internal injury and a host of other financial and emotional issues.
“For someone who had been friendly with the ocean, receiving these mixed signals was quite troubling. I wanted to be underwater but somehow it felt like the water was pushing me away,” Mirani said. Her anxiety first kicked in while training in Bali from April to July 2023. "It took about 13 months for me to overcome that anxiety," she said.
“I remember in April 2024, when I was returning on a boat from the Barren Islands in Andamans, I started crying because the complicated relationship with the ocean had resurfaced,” Mirani recalled.
Cut to May 5, 2024, Mirani was on the other side of Thailand in Koh Phangan, continuing her efforts to crack the 40 m dive. “We were at Sail Rock in Koh Phangan, but the weather was not very suitable for a deepdive. It was so funny that I was convinced that the 40 m won’t happen,” said Mirani.
During training sessions, a goal is set. That day, the goal for the deepest dive with a rope was 41 m. “I did not know that my coach had dropped the rope at 41 m,” recalled Mirani.
Not long after, Mirani set a new record: to become India's first woman to freedive 40 m, a feat that took one minute 50 seconds to complete. “The nervousness and resistance all disappeared in thin air that day,” recalled the record setter.
“When I surfaced and did my recovery breath, he asked me to look at my watch and it said '40+m.' I couldn't believe what I saw,” said Mirani excitedly.
She mentioned that none of this would have been possible without her coach, Lukas Grabowski. She called him an “encyclopedia” on everything related to diving. “He was a confidante, a friend, a support system, and a teacher who believed in me more than I believed in myself,” said Mirani.
But did being a woman come as a challenge, I prodded. “As a woman, the reactions you receive are a mixed bag,” Mirani confirmed, adding that the onus and pressure to prove your credibility and skill weighs much more for a woman than for a man. “Something as small as a critical eye from a fisherman, who would look at you slightly differently [than looking at men] would tell you the entire story of being a female freediver,” Mirani added.
Physiologically, too, there are differences. Mirani was diagnosed with Amenorrhea for about 11 months, during which her menstrual cycle was disrupted. This was caused because of hormonal imbalances in the body as a result of frequent changes in her body temperature. Lifestyle and dietary changes, along with ayurvedic medicines, helped alleviate it.
However, she said “the good part is you might get lucky and find your girl tribe with these freedives.”
Mirani is currently focussed on building a freediving community in India. She hopes to help people experience the bliss and freedom that one can feel even in these difficult times.
With few avenues in India for people to train as freedivers, Mirani aims to do her bit to put India's freediving scene on the global map. “We, as a country, have immense talent but also a lot to catch up on. I want to do whatever I can to promote this delightful sport in India,” Mirani concluded.
