c u on top - satyabrata dam

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.

If one object can be named as an extension of my limbs then that would be a Swiss Knife (SK). To me it is not a lowly knife but a life saving device, exactly what the manufacturers Victorinox claim it to be. Over the years I have used many models and varieties of SK and currently I have 6 different models at home including the ubiquitous Swiss Champ with which you can literally dismantle a space shuttle or disarm a nuclear ballistic missile. Any one or two of these SK would always accompany me in all my travels, adventurous or not, and they have literally saved my life on numerous occasions. I am often asked by people to recommend a SK for their use and that is the key to buying a SK; what are you going to use it for; some use it as a keychain, some to impress, some to cut vegetables at home, some to climb Everest and then some to just hang it on the wall of their sitting room. If you visit the Victorinox website or a showroom you would be completely baffled and boggled by the range...

This tale is about the over sized pelican (I hope it is a Pelican) that stays in my house. It is also about an off the edge adventure but above all a sweet little story from life. The pelican is funny and it sits in my drawing room, making every visitor laugh and scaring a few. This is the story of how this bird found her way from the Bernese Alpine meadows of Switzerland into my house. We would have to go back in time and give the credit of this to the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In his story ‘The Final Problem,’ Conan Doyle decided to eliminate his detective and Holmes’ arch rival Professor Moriarty in a deadly duel where they finally meet atop the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland and while engaged in hand to hand combat both slip from a ledge and hurtle to their death. This, as Doyle had decided, would be Sherlock Holmes’ last story. But public outcry from all over the world forced him to resurrect Holmes from the dead soon. But while doing so, the slee...

When we think of Switzerland we normally think of the snowcapped mountains with endless ski slopes, sparkling blue lakes and some of you, perhaps, of the Swiss Banks. Rarely would we associate plain land with Swiss topography though there are vast tracts of Switzerland devoid of anything vertical. With my enchantment with anything natural that rises up into the azure, my obvious destinations in Switzerland had always been the Zermatt Valley and Grindelwald, the two take off points for some of the nicest and steepest mountain architectures anywhere in the world. In one of my trips to Switzerland, after I had climbed few peaks in the Zermatt Valley, including the infamous Weisshorn by its north face, and had strained my ligaments to a degree not utterly suitable for such activities, one of my well-meaning friends suggested that it was perhaps time for me to give the Swiss Alps a break from my antics and I would be well advised to see the prettiest village in all of Switzerland. And it i...