c u on top - satyabrata dam

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...

The year of 2013 is nearing its predestined end. Even though we are still a fortnight away, I am offering my regular year end post bit early as from tomorrow I would be in situations from where a post may not be practically feasible; and perhaps where a post or internet would not be a part of my itinerary at all. Yes, you guessed it; I am off into my mountains. Barring a few, who have sighted me recently, perhaps most of you out there who know me only vicariously by now presume that I am no more, not in the physical sense since my last post happened more than three months ago. But I am here once again to disappoint you. I am alive, very much so, and laughing at the paradox of it all. Though I must say if not for the year end post, I would have written another post only in 2014, since till now I had written exactly 13 posts, and that seemed beautiful for the year 2013. But alas, as so much in life is unpredictable, you will now have 14 posts in my blog for the year 2013. And...

People often ask me what have been my worst moments in life, when I almost died, or felt that I wouldn’t get back alive, when everything seemed hopeless and totally lost. My answer normally is that despite anything nothing is ever hopeless. As long as I have my last breathe within me even if I am totally lost and on the verge of dying. There is hope as long as there is life. And then I embellish it with saying that there are no worst or best moments in life; it all depends on which side of the fence you are looking at it from that decides if it was worst or best; albeit it was certainly a MOMENT. Whereas it is said that you should count your life by how many moments that took your breath away, I normally count them by how many mistakes I made and therefore learnt something out of it and in my case my mistakes are always goofy since I laugh about them upon my own silly attitude. Oxford dictionary defines goofy – ludicrous or foolish; and mistake – a wrong action attributable to ...

The other day while wading through Kalahari I met Mother Teresa and Madam Mata Hari One sweet lady and the other deadly I asked 'Hello girls, how do you do?' Mother said, 'Bless you son' Madam said 'I better kill you' I love them both so couldn't say no Mother embraced me within her glow Madam put an arrow to her bow Being a warrior of peace I told Mother to walk with the breeze And to oil her bow I gave Madam some grease So Mother ambled spreading love and joy I tumbled behind like a lost boy Madam would have nothing of this decoy Following one and pursued by another Two beautiful ladies asunder I wished being a better runner And then my dream ended Upon this earth I again landed Bruised and a bit jaded Two beautiful women with hearts of gold Kind Mother and Madam bold My soul to them both sold The above utterly ridiculous lines are a no-holds-barred impromptu take on two very dear friends, I have recently met. I respect, ...

Your Russian Guide in Kremlin I just returned from a madcap adventure in Russia with a group of friends to visit the highest summit of Europe – Elbrus in the Caucasus. This post is not about this climb. I know or knew Russia and Russians well and a smattering of the language that had taken me from the high volcanic plateau’s of Kamchatka to the Baltic or Finnish Lapland and from the frozen shores of Laptev Sea (Northernmost tips of Siberia) to the breezy Caspian, often pursued or accompanied by stern non-smiling men and women in uniform whose purpose was to ensure I did or came to no harm. So rushing through the Russian Tundra aboard the Trans-Siberian Rail or reindeer-sleding towards the North Pole, I had always been amazed and impressed with the Russian diversity and the people’s tenacity over so much anarchy and butchery. My first trip to Russia was more than 20 years back when KGB ruled that world and the mere mention of Lubyanka could make any lion-hearted feel dizzy; ...

Often hailed as the world’s most popular and most recognizable puzzle game and also the most perplexing, I doubt if there are many on this planet who haven’t heard of Rubik’s Cube. And I am sure most such people have always harvested the desire to solve one, if one could be solved. With 43 quintillion permutations (43,252,003,274,489,856,000 to be precise) this cube has long puzzled mankind leaving only very few cube crazies to be able to do it. When we look at a scrambled cube and start to unscramble using whatever little brain or logic we have, very soon we realize that we are not reaching anywhere. And after few hours we are ready to throw it out of the window out of sheer frustration. Yet when we watch a master turn and twist the abominable cubies or cubelets (the tiny cubes that make up the entire cube) and place before us a perfectly solved cube in seconds then we can only gasp and wonder at the magic of it all.

I am motionless as a spider spying upon its prey. I am stuck on a sheer column of ice, no thicker than few inches with visible ground far beyond my eyes dare to travel. I feel like a spider but wonder (the most irrelevant notion at that moment) if ever a spider has ventured across icy terrains of such smoothness and vertical travesty. Even as my eyes, though still, look for places where I could place my ice pick, my four limbs glued to the element begins to grow weary. Precious seconds are ticking away and all I can do is gasp, breathe, and pray for a miracle. With mother Earth nearly 100 m below I am venturing upon a new ice route in the cold frigid mountains of Colorado’s Telluride town deep end of box canyon on one of the most treacherous and iconic winter routes of all, the dreaded ‘Bridal Veil’ graded WI 5-6 under normal conditions. It is a tottering column of such jumbled ice sculpture that from the bottom you cannot see even 1/4 th of the way up.

I like to believe that I am a happy and content human being even if I aspire for more. And this self-belief has only been heightened by hundreds of my friends who seek my advice and guidance in matters of happiness at moments of perplexity. So I figured I must be doing something right to be in this constant state of flux, always changing, transforming, yet smiling and happy and joyful – most of the time. Few religious beliefs and schools of philosophy has led us to accept that ‘life is suffering’, also most of us find life too difficult or complex and complicated. But not once do we see that the key to happiness is with us, within us. Happiness and sorrow are simultaneously present no matter who we are, where we are, what we do or how we live. The difference is in our vision, in our attitude, in our way of life. I must explain the title to this post before we proceed further, lest some of you may be offended: a short guide since your guide here is short (I am only 170 cm in my he...