c u on top - satyabrata dam

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...

I just got back after climbing a big mountain, really big, really high though may not be really difficult. This story is not about this mountain or about the climb but about a vivid dream that I dreamt one night in one of the high camps and then on waking up, remained so clear that I jotted it down in my diary (which incidentally has not even one line about the climb). So here is the dream verbatim as the way I remembered and recorded in my diary. This is what I saw… A wise man from a fair skinned nation once traveled to the great East, into the Himalaya and chanced upon a naked sage, who, it was reported, had remained stationary at one place beneath a towering peak for as long as one could remember. The wise man, full of wisdom and himself, drew level with the naked sage and asked, ‘why are you stationary, so seeped into stillness when everything within this cosmos is in motion?’ The naked sage smiled through his dense beard and muttered, ‘my honorable friend from far,...

Recently I climbed a big mountain; big both in girth and loftiness, very big. Much happened during this climb and much that should not have happened, but today’s story is not about this mountain or about the climb, it’s about something else entirely. Something that is intriguingly significant to me and even though I do see its rationale in afterthought I am still puzzling over the incident. Lord Shiva is one of the primary Hindu Gods, in fact the most supreme of the trinity. He is on one hand the destroyer and on another the procreator since without annihilation there can’t be creation or so we believe. Shiva certainly is someone’s figment of imagination on high testosterone and the legend is an extraordinary saga. Of all the facts about Shiva that we are led to believe, the one I hold closest to my heart is that He resides in the Himalaya and his five abodes are spread across the length of the icy peaks. Therefore with that belief, he is my only god since Himalaya is my hom...

Today I am going to tell a little story and some thoughts in this post. The story may or may not have any link to the thoughts like any other things in this life and universe. While each is related and linked to each, they are also not. Just as a grain of sand can be the entire cosmos or it can just be that – a grain of sand. I will begin by quoting one of my favorite Zen thoughts - A person may appear a fool but he may only be guarding his wisdom carefully

Climbing mountains is my journey through life, a pilgrimage and a quest for my own true self. Reasons I chose this path of exploration are many and diverse; breathtaking views, infinite possibilities, solitude and redefining my own boundaries are primary among them. And the fact that they are there only helped. People say that I do things that very few in the world do and when they ask me why, I reply ‘why not?’ Though in my opinion what I do is not so uncommon; you and I, we all climb our own mountains of body and mind and of soul and your journeys are no less exciting or unpredictable than mine and at the end we all do wish to reach the top and then get down safe and happy back from where we began. And perhaps in this regard our climbs begin to differ.

I looked up at the white summit, across and over a convex wall of rock-hard ice... it looked tantalisingly near yet I knew I would never reach it, at least not today. I had reached the end of my endurance, expertise and wits. I had nothing more to counter the mountain’s defences. If I wished to live then today I must quit. For the moment it was a summit too far.

Once upon a time in the late eighteenth century there lived a group of monks by a fast mountain river that flowed from the hills and through the serene woods where the monks lived in a modest monastery. These monks lived a very simple life doing what they were supposed to do, and taught by their master. They cooked and ate and then preached the Lord Buddha’s teachings among the poor village folks that came to see them. Out of all the monks the brightest was Chen who lived the life of a true hermit never seeking more than what was given, never saying more than asked and never going further than his monastery. He was a pure soul yet he wasn’t ready to go and his master, despite his best efforts hadn’t been able to show Chen that he was ready and now needed to leave. Now what these monks had never done before was cross the river that flowed nearby though they drew its sweet water each day. So the master talked to his brother on the other side of the river and one morning ...

I have to admit that the title is an unabashed copy of Somerset Maugham’s autobiography with the year as a suffix and hence my own in a way. Not that I should be ashamed of copying that great now-dead author Mr. Maugham. I absolutely adore him and his writing skills. As always I felt the need to sum up the year though I am sure no one gives a rat’s shit (kids please pardon my cussing) what that is since I don’t give myself. But then there are people who do slither across my blog looking for some banality and blemished banter and of course some intended pun along with bitter humor. So let’s begin at the very beginning (where else can one begin from?)… As I pen these words, I can hear the rushing waves of the Pacific on the west coast of the US of A on the last day of 2012 / first day of 2013 through the darkness and to imagine that exactly at these hours and day precisely a year ago I was fighting ticks and other abominable wild life deep into the Agumbe Rainforest of Souther...

Someone is certainly dead in this picture :)  To many of my friends around the world, I am perhaps dead today; and they would either be mourning or smiling in glee (I hope the latter). Not that I mind, since death is always by my side (as with any mortal human) and it’s good to be dead while you are still alive since then you learn how others perceive you and how deeply are you loved or hated. But then some of you may ask why my friends would presume me dead on this particular day, on this particular date! The answer is simple. When I was asked before the advent of the net, how one would know if I am still alive or dead, I simply had no definite answer. Spending most of life in places that are out of communication coverage (underwater or high above into the clouds or deep jungles) how on earth would anyone ever know, since I myself wouldn’t know. But then came the net and suddenly things changed and then I started my blog and things changed even more. Ever since I st...

The endless white sand dunes Out of the three best things that befell my fortune in Belem; two happened on the same evening, within a span of few minutes with the same person and I am myself shocked that this person hails from the male species and I really took an intense liking to him. How and what got me to Alexandre is a long tale not suitable for current consumption, but suffice to say that he picked me up one bland Belem evening to offer my hungry soul some delightful delicacies. We finally ended up in a roadside joint and had just dipped our fingers in a large cauldron (caldrao) of fish swimming unceremoniously in thick clear yellow soup when suddenly Alexandre froze, one twisted shrimp poised tantalizingly from his lips. He could as well be a fish about to take the bait but at the last moment arrested by his element of surprise. I wondered how could he take the delectable shrimp that close to his mouth and not put it in! Some display of self-control, if I had seen any...