c u on top - satyabrata dam

  Stewart on the summit of South Gateway Rock, Garden of the Gods The American icon, Stewart M. Green is synonymous to the challenging arena of rock climbing for over half a century, especially in and around Colorado, Utah, and anywhere else that has a vertical piece of rock. I doubt if there is any rock climber in the US who doesn’t know this legendary, larger than life individual, or haven’t consulted his climbing guide books. Despite coming from the two polar opposites in climbing; he climbing rocks from sea level to up to around 15000ft, and I climbing ice and snow from 15000ft to up to literally the top of the world. In short where his climbs ended (in altitude) mine began. Yet we became the closest of virtual friends more than a decade back. We have many things in common: we share the same zodiac sign (Aquarius) our birthdays separated by only 9 days. Our names start with the same alphabet. But primarily what bonded us was our shared similar views of climbing, life and the ...

  As an individual, I like my own company above all and spend weeks, months at a stretch away from all human in high mountains and forests. I often climb big mountains solo, with very little on my back. I also free solo ice lines, frozen waterfalls, far from any human presence. And I am often asked why do I do it, since it is also very risky, dangerous and generally not done by many. Many free solo climbers do it once in a while. I do it more often.   Right from my childhood, from the time I took to the mountains, I was an introvert and just loved the majestic sky kissing icy peaks and the sprawling glaciers all to myself. The gaping crevasses didn’t scare me, rather drew me into their icy depths and the lofty summits ignited deep within an unquenchable thirst for those forlorn places. Places where no man has ever been before, or very few before me. I started climbing with people much elder to me in age and experience and I was fortunate to learn from some of the world’s l...

    Once in a while, especially when we don’t feel that things are going our way and we are not finding the spark or excitement in our life and somehow, despite our best efforts, happiness eludes us; I feel it is important to look deep within ourselves and ask few pertinent questions. Rather than running out to a therapist or to a friend. Because as I always insist, no one in this world should know you better than your own self. So everything must begin with your own self centered world and self analyzing thoughts.   So ask: why do I do what I do? Can you really answer this question with all honesty and devoid of anything else! Can you be totally honest with your own self where no one else is privy to, no one is going to see you there or judge you. You are the judge and jury and also the defendant and the prosecutor. Much of your life’s state (sad or happy) will depend upon that honest answer to the question: why do I do what I do?   And then once you fin...

  Few weeks ago, while delivering a corporate talk at Zurich, someone from the audience asked me, how can we keep our every day exciting and fresh, since that was one of the key messages of my talk. And I said that there are many ways of doing it, but one very obvious and easy method is to always try do something, every day, that you have never done before. It is obvious because a human brain has developed to such a stage of infinite capacity to assimilate and analyse that we need to keep feeding it with something new to keep it active and satiated. If we don’t feed it something new, be it an experience, ideas, etc then it soon starts getting bored and then we get addicted to things like tiktok or Insta, which offers us instant satiation often without any substance. And it is simple because anything new that we have never done or experienced before doesn’t have to be something challenging or even out of the world. It simply should be something that you, as an individual, have neve...

    Though I often talk about happiness and conduct happiness workshops, I do agree that there are times in all of our lives when the feeling of blue is not only true but perhaps necessary too. Now why do we call this feeling of sadness, being under, etc as blue! My online research threw up lots of different answers to the origin of this expression, yet there wasn’t a single universal consensus to its neonatal source. So, here’s my version, why feeling low is often referred as feeling blue: I am a die-hard romantic (no matter what the women of my life who have passed me by say) and my favourite colour is blue. I associate blue with the abundance of the day lit sky, to the vast bodies of water aka lakes, rivers, oceans, glaciers, all appearing blue as they reflect the azure sky above. I would like to believe, which happens to me too, though rarely do I feel blue, when I feel a bit down under, I walk up into nature, mostly mountains or a mountain lake or waterfall, or a gl...

  As I travel through the world, interacting with hundreds and thousands of people, often have I been asked the secret to leading a life full of happiness, excitement and joy. Occasionally some people (the ones always looking for a short cut universal solution) have asked one single step / action through which they can achieve this seemingly blissful life. This post is my viewpoint about such one single step that can lead to living fully. ‘Letting go’ is truly the key to everything. All our miseries, sadness, failures, dejections, depressions, negativity, etc. arise from one single factor – as human we don’t let go and don’t like the idea of letting go and we are reluctant to the point of absurdity, to let go. Whereas letting go is the order of the very fabric of the universe, of nature, of life itself. When we go against this fundamental law of nature, no wonder, life eludes us. Let’s analyse this with an example. What do we need (not desire) the most to live...

  When someone refers to an ailment or physical condition as ‘fatal’ it sets me thinking with a quizzical smile that what is fatal after all. Dictionary definition says fatal is something that causes death (for human and animal species that is). But do only the living die or even the inanimate perish! But let’s not get too philosophical here lest we become as incomprehensible as the immortal book by Sartre ‘Being and Nothingness’, which no one in the world in their right mind has read in totality though most claim they have, and those very few who did hadn’t a clue what the book was trying to summarize. I know this for a fact because I am one of those very few who did (I am most certainly never in my right mind). Go figure. Now coming back to the main point. What is fatal and should we be afraid or wary of it. According to me Life itself is a fatal condition of existence. When life begins, it starts killing us at the rate of 24hrs per day. Not faster or slower. It maintains th...