c u on top - satyabrata dam

I wrote the following story more than a decade ago, based on a real life incident. I just discovered it, somewhere far back into my hard disk and I am publishing it here just to prove to those people who think that I can not write mushy and romantic stuff... at least this proves that at some point of time I could. Read on and enjoy. The pictures accompanying this post are just random beautiful shots. “Excuse me! Could you get me this book please?” A soft voice with crisp enunciation broke the afternooon torpor that the library always had when everyone retired for lunch. Though Shruti stopped tallying the books with the catalogue held in her hand, she did not turn around. Finding books for members or issuing them wasn’t her job. One of the clerks would do it. She was about to resume her interrupted work when the erstwhile voice uttered again: “Excuse me, madame! Could you please help me out?” The persuasive tone made Shruti glance over her shoulder. Preoccupied as she ...

For a nanosecond, my entire world froze, and stood still. Everything around me merged into a swirl of mist and white, and each cell of my body stopped their designed functions to await the inevitable – the inevitability of danger, the inevitability of destruction, the inevitability of death. For I was going to fall. Stuck like an insignificant spider, at 5800 m on the sheer ice wall of 80 degree on the southwest face of peak Sujtilla (the Needle Peak), I knew that I had lost my purchase – the four points of tempered steel that had held me so far, were now nothing more than extra weights, only aiding gravity to propel me down faster. In that billionth of a second my entire life took an abject distance and I looked at myself with utmost clarity. This is what happened when it happened . I thought of nothing, no last words of wisdom, no visions of how life could have been, no pining for anyone to be close to me, no regrets, no sense of exhilaration, and certainly, no terror...