c u on top - satyabrata dam

I do everything for love since I exist because of love and I will die one day for love My obituary should read: on the journey of love he kept on climbing There is no love without freedom and no freedom without love I am happy to live as I am happy to die since I love death as I love life No point in living if I do not live for love I cannot make someone love me nor how nor when nor why she chooses that love to be. I can only love fully with my mind body and soul and hope that she will recognise it even if she cannot reciprocate in equal measure or manner Love is the only action that need not have a reaction. Love is complete in itself. I'm grateful that I discovered love because she passed by and does it matter if she never noticed me bloom within that love! I can only make myself worthy of love and wait till someone recognises that It is possible to discover love in one but find it in another. Discovery of love is not always finding love It is not possible ...

I believe only in two things or rather experiences since they both essentially are just that, and everything else evolve out of them: I believe in being alive and being in love; and today on Friday the 13 th , 2015 I would like to share few beliefs about my two experiences. Here is the first one: -  I am and will always be the luckiest person in the world Miracles happen all around me every moment There is no one in the world who hates me or dislikes me or bears any ill towards me Everyone I have met or meet or will be meeting were, are and will be friends. No one is or will ever be a stranger to me I can only live in and for the moment; past is irrevocably gone serving only as meaningful lessons and the future is nothing but another name for hope Life is what it is, and only I can find a purpose or make it meaningful; though sometimes it is best to be purposeless and meaningless; like a sail boat without sails amidst a tempest sea No matter where I am, I a...

Lago Torre, Patagonia Argentina This time around while summing up the year 2014 that just whizzed by I am completely determined to avoid intricate statistics lest it leads to three mainstream reactions among my readers (like it usually does) – one of admiration (I like this one, especially when I get those delicious mails from delicious women); one of envy; and one of utter disbelief (many believe all these travels and climbs of mine are pure fiction and products of my over productive imagination). Suffice it to say that I did not travel much in 2014, barely 10 countries in four continents and crossed the Atlantic only four times and kissed the Pacific shores twice. Climbed very moderately and only till around 7000m. Visited only two places that are rarely visited by human. Air miles covered must be in the region of 100,000 if not more but then this is merely an average human being I suppose. Despite all precautions taken, the year ended with a black tipped nose due to ca...

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.