c u on top - satyabrata dam

The bone cracking cold that whiplashed my face relentlessly as the sled over which I gingerly perched raced through one of the wildest and remotest tundra in the world I realized that this could well be the final journey of my life and with that self-effacing thought my face grimaced into a smile of supreme contentment. I love latitudes; not that longitudes are any less desirable or necessary but it is the former that always takes me to the two extremes possible on a sphere. And I love cold places; colder and icier the better while coldest and iciest the best. A cursory glance at a globe will divulge five lines of latitude that evenly cut across our earth for reasons beyond my comprehension. These are (from North to South): Arctic Circle, Tropic of Cancer, Equator, Tropic of Capricorn and Antarctic Circle. Of course they are not there on ground, though on my first crossing of the Equator on a ship I did maintain a sleepless vigil on the quarterdeck staring deep and hard at the green oc...

Any visitor to my home, who is allowed to step into the drawing room, gets drawn to the mantelpiece that holds besides two climbing trophies an assortment of rocks and crystals of all shapes, sizes and color. The 20 odd rock pieces find representation from all the seven continents and from some of the remotest and most hostile spots on our planet. There’s one from the summit of Everest and another from the crater of the highest volcano on Earth. There are crystals from Antarctica and a limestone from the deepest cave in the world. One of the rocks show the perfect silhouette of a temple while another enclose within a deep pulsating glow of surreal turquoise. They all are natural and have not been modified by any way by any man. There’s even two small glass phials containing ice (now water) from the two geographic poles; predictably one is sweet and the other salty. Now amidst the collection there’s one that superficially is the ugliest with dark contours across its broken and undulatin...

I make a distinct distinction between fate and destiny. We do not shape our fate but we can and do design our destiny. When we do nothing at all and just go with the flow of life, then whatever happens to us is fate but when we act, to the best of our abilities and judgment or sense and sensibilities; and then whatever happens is our destiny. This post is a feeble attempt to sum up my thoughts on one of my closest calls to eternity, which I fail to explain even today that how I lived and my friend did not, though we both had shaped our destiny due to our stubbornness to do one more crazy act just to prove that it could be done. This post might also lead you to appreciate that what is more agonizing and terrifying than death itself is its approach, its proximity and the slow and steady certitude that you are going to die. Period: Circa 2001, December. Location: somewhere in the Patagonian Mountains within the fuzzy borderland between Chile and Argentina. Actors: Four strapping and caref...