c u on top - satyabrata dam

Crossing crevasse on Everest I often have discussions with friends and well-wishers about the element of risk involved in my ordinary day to day life and I always insist that my life has far less risk than a regular city dweller; where she crosses the roads, drives, drinks tap water, etc each such so-called mundane activity that is actually very high on risk element. We simply do not realize this that your life is at a much higher risk than mine, especially when I climb those stupendously steep walls of ice or step into the death zone. So to give you a point by point comparison, I have picked up two supposedly diametrically opposite activity that can be grasped by all. Let’s say I am climbing Everest and you are just boarding a flight to a vacation or work; here are the ten reasons why you are taking a much higher risk than I: -

Two days back I received a message from a friend who I hadn’t met or communicated for a good number of years. We were in love once. I still am and I am guessing she too is though it’s now more like you love a fool since he is a source of entertainment. The message in exact these words – “People say you are still alive and I hope you are, yet I think you must be dead frozen stiff actually stuck to one of your silly vertical ice walls in some silly godforsaken corner of the planet. I don’t think you would ever read these words, at least not in your earthly avatar and being dead why would you even care to read mails even if you had the technology to do so. Do they have internet in heaven or hell or wherever in between places you might be? Oh goodness, what a silly question. Now the real question is if you are already dead, according to my presumption, why I am even writing this message to you! I am writing to you because I need to write to my own self, to my soul and I can only do s...

Einstein once said that we truly fail when we give up; as long as we do not give up we continue to progress and learn and even if we do not achieve the desired outcome at the end of the day, we do not fail. We can pause, we can ponder, we can change our tactics and strategies, we can rest and recuperate, but we can never give up. Giving up is a finality like quitting, to not continue to pursue what you truly wish to achieve leads to real failure. As long as you do not give up you are on the journey of discovery. Life is such that almost nothing would ever happen exactly the way you plan or wish it to happen. You never made a plan to read these words, but you are here right now reading this post. And you have no idea how far or close you might be to your goal. You don’t know when things will start turning your way and which doors will open when you knock hard enough. You do not know what the horizon will bring you unless you have climbed high enough to peek beyond. The goal of...

Many years back I met a recently crowned Ms World, whom the media had touted as the most beautiful woman in the world (obviously). So I asked her if she really believed that; and she said an emphatic ‘Yes’. I took another ten minutes to show her that it wasn’t an objective truth and there’s no way that she was the most beautiful woman on Earth. Her title was true only after applying so many variables and factors and limiting criteria that by the end of our discussion the poor girl was literally walloping in her real tears. So I consoled her by saying that it really didn’t matter what I or anyone else said, and she really did not have to go for a breast lift or dental fix to be truly the most beautiful woman; all she needed was to believe and that’s all. We became friends and very soon she totally felt as the most beautiful woman ever in the history of mankind and didn’t give a damn to her title or to the media or to anyone saying anything at all. Even after all these years, with a ...

When I was still in my teens (I am still there mentally though), I had read a short story about a man of leisure; it was a great story of a Scotsman who simply lived a life of leisure, doing or not doing anything that he did or didn’t want to do. He wasn’t tied down by any other conditions of life; everything depended upon his wish. That to me had seemed a charming way of living; live the way you wish, do what you want and do not do what you do not want to – very simple. Over the years in search of true freedom I never realized that I too had become a sort of man of leisure. And just few days ago a distant friend (distant in distance) pointed out to me that I was a man of leisure; which, she promptly added, was the pipe dream of most men and women anyway. Due to my faltering and blistering grasp of the language, I first checked the online Oxford Dictionary (don’t tell me you still own and consult a paper real dictionary) for the definition and it proclaimed – a person who does ...

Today let’s look at one of the greatest lessons nature has taught me that possessiveness is self-defeating; you cannot possess without losing and when you do not possess you cannot lose. What do we really need to live, I mean ‘really, really’ - air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat. Can we possess any of these things; and come to think of it, do we ever even want to possess them. Have you ever thought, when you breathe in the sweet mountain air or the invigorating ocean breeze that this air should belong to you and only to you, or when you drink water (perhaps you feel possessive of the water bottle in a hot summer day) that only you should have the privilege to clean drinking water, or that all food should only be for you. I don’t think any of us have ever thought about these things, even though without these three we cannot be alive. Despite being absolutely essential to live, we do not feel possessive about these three. We don’t mind when 7 billion other human beings and...

Everest Base Camp from South with Khumbu Icefall in the center People have been dying on Everest ever since human started attempting to reach its summit. Number of people who have died on Everest as on date stand around 265 with number of people who have summitted at 4042. This gives us a 6.5% death rate; which is not such an alarming figure at all. On 18 th April this year, 16 Sherpa guides died in one avalanche making this the worst accident on Everest ever, plunging the climbing world into a raging storm of debates. Among the dead I lost three very close friends, whom I had known for decades. Even though high altitude mountain climbing is among the most dangerous activities on Earth, people do not die proportionately to the risks involved since mountain climbing is a very specialized activity that is undertaken by experienced and qualified climbers and since we know that it is dangerous, it is done with utmost caution and after all due training. Whereas millions die cross...

Just showing off before I started Every day I ask myself: when was the last time I did something for the first time. Even though the answer is obvious (which is everyday), this is true on most days at a subliminal level, but on a physical level, when I asked myself the question, the answer was: almost to this date, last month. And what I did can only be a summary of my life’s motto ‘go with the flow’ since what I did could only happen if you let yourself go with the flow – snowboarding. It might come as a surprise to many that even after spending most of my life in, around and within snow, I had never done snowboarding in my life, not even strapped on to one ever. During my Swiss trip last month I learnt that a dear friend is also a champion pro-level snowboarder and hence ensued the adventure and I loved every moment of this sport even though I fell countless times; since only by falling do we learn to get up.

This is just a sample love letter, not the one I refer in this post...  Thank God there is love, thank God there are women in love, thank God there are women who are in love with me, thank God there are women who are in love with me and are old fashioned, thank God there are women who are in love with me and are old fashioned enough to believe in old style love letters written on pieces of paper and thank God even more for making at least one such woman who is in love and with me and is old fashioned enough to believe in love and in expressing her love through old style love letter written on high grain solid bond stationary and that one day she indeed put her heart and thoughts upon such sheets of papers and sent it my way across a distance of a million mile; because if she wasn’t and hadn’t then I would not be here today writing this post.

Armand in the middle with his cousins Henry to his left and Tom to his right In an inexplicable twist in the tale, I recently found myself by the languid lanes of Trieste in Italy, knocking at the doors of a Mediterranean Villa with a splendid view of the Adriatic Sea below and a hill full of forests above. And within this villa, I found the boy with the bike. Armand Monnoyer is Belgian and he had celebrated his 20 years of existence on our planet only two days before I met him. A nephew of my hosts, Armand could well be my son and what endeared him to me right away were his shy open smile and his current occupation of biking through Europe in search of his own true self. A yearlong project that he had started around August last year; of which he was now in his final leg of five months hoping to return by the end of 2014 summer. I spent few days with him taking long walks by the sea, helping together in the kitchen, eating homemade breads and jams, sharing stories and laughte...

Almost akin to the question that every lover dreads being asked ‘why do you love me?’ is the question, ‘why do you climb?’ Just like the lover who fumbles for the right answer, not wanting to hurt the feelings of the beloved and at the same time feeling totally inadequate to offer an answer that would match his / her joy of being in love; I too face the dilemma. When in love, you know how you feel, and you can describe that quite lucidly but why do you feel like that; why does the object of your affection create such amazing euphoria at their mere thoughts and images, and their physical proximity driving you to the insane brink of existence; why, the eternal WHY...?

I have been engaged in an experiment for the last one year, since I had nothing better to do, in order to find something that we see each day almost everywhere in the world. Finally I have enough evidence and statistics and demographic distribution to release the results of my finding. For long we have been told that we must treat animals like human, with love, kindness, without bias and give them the kind of empathy we would bestow upon a fellow human. And my experiment was to find out if that is the correct way or should we be treating our fellow human as we treat animals. So as I went around the globe charting my vertical world, I asked few straightforward questions to all that crossed my path, both friends and strangers. I asked, ‘do you love animals?’ the universal answer was always affirmative; barring a few who said they love all animals except the venomous and slimy slithery ones but they had no desire to harm them or molest them in anyway whatsoever and they simply p...

I am a firm believer in the dictum that there are certain things in our lives that we all already have, from the day we are born and we don’t need to look for it to find it since it is already there, but what we need to do is to create the right condition within ourselves for it to reveal its magic. And Love is perhaps the first such thing that we all have. Yet it is for love that so many of us crave and search and often die in despair of not having found it. We just crossed the day when most part of the world celebrates Love; including those who are looking for it to arrive. It hasn’t gone anywhere so it will never arrive if that is what you are waiting for. So in today’s post I will write briefly about one of the main reasons why many of us are unable to create the right condition within ourselves and hence do not realize that love is staring right at our face each time we look into the mirror.

Today is a good day (just like any other) to renew my blog presence since today I complete 49 years of three dimensional existence on our planet and what day can be better to prove to my distracters that I am still very much alive. With real friends (not FB friends) hailing from all the 7 continents, predictably the wishes started arriving before I arrived into the day. So the first wishes came all the way from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Korea, Singapore etc then the ones from India, east Asia, Gulf, slowly nudging into Africa and eastern Europe and now as I write this from western Europe. I am sure by evening / night they will be coming from across the Atlantic and then from the Pacific shores. Few wishes have already arrived from beyond the Andes though. Each one of the wishes contained the word ‘happy’ most of them contained ‘exciting’ and many contained ‘inspiring’ and some contained ‘amazing’ few ‘adventure’ some ‘rock’ some ‘party’ and quite a few ‘smile’ and ‘l...