Monday, November 21, 2005

a 55 word story! someone's dare

"it is tough deciding between poison and slashing one's wrists. His beloved lay with a gunshot wound to the head, it looked like a "bindi" that wasn't. She wouldn't wear a jooda, celebrating her marriage. His beloved was dead, in his arms and he was about to follow her...if only the choice was easy..."

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Book Review (also on Amazon)

“ High Exposure”, David Breashears (Simon and Schuster – 1999).

This year in May, Indian Air force expedition lost Sqn Ldr Chaitanya, who never returned to the summit camp and my colleague from NIM (Nehru Institute Of Mountaineering) – Uttarkashi, Anupam, returned frost bitten from 8600m as his oxygen mask malfunctioned. I was following the progress of the expedition on a daily basis and even though IAF team managed to put three of the team members on the summit, the expedition was shadowed with loss of Sqn Ldr. Chaitanya and failure of the team to find him even after a prolonged search operation. I was so involved with the expedition, that it felt like a personal loss. I had either Camus or mountains to turn to. I headed to hills and did my “dealing” there and brought a copy of the “High Exposure” by David Breashers while returning back home.

“If I could be one tenth of the man that Beck Weathers was on that day, I’ll be a very proud man”, writes David Breashears about Beck Weathers, who after being given up for dead, not once, but thrice. He was still jovial and calm, as Breashers and Ed Viesturs, were getting him from camp 3 to 2 on Everest after the 1996 tragedy on Everest. In 1996 eleven people perished during the summit attempt at Everest. There has been a series of publications capturing the impressions of those who saw the tragedy unfold on that fateful day. “High Exposure” reveals Breashers view of the tragedy and so far is the most detached account of what happened on that day on the Everest.

David Breashers was brought up in Boulder, Colorado and discovered the love of climbing there. Growing up as a kid in 70s with a prodigious talent for climbing earned him the nick Kloberdanz kid early enough. While he honed his climbing skills in Yosemite, David was slowly unfolding his own vision of climbing. Working in Oil Fields, living in shacks, just to make enough money, such that he could keep climbing is as inspiring as it can get. David entered the Mecca of mountaineering, the Himalaya, as an assistant cameraman and realized that he had a love for both climbing as well as filming the mountains. The unique combination earned his keeping with various filming crews and he could be in Himalayas, mountaineering.

The high exposure covers a lot of space and time, from being raised by a violent short-tempered father and a caring mother, to the climbing whiz kid, an oilman, and a filmmaker to an acclaimed mountaineer. The journey from Colorado to Himalayas is written in an easy and candid manner of a mountaineer. Mountaineering is a very personal adventure, it is to see “how far can one go” having assumed that going “too far” is not universal. Moving on this edge of far and too far is what keeps mountaineers moving, the summit is a pause between these journeys.

David Breashers summited Everest for the 5th time last year at the age of 49, most recognize David from his 1996 IMAX movie on Everest. He resides in Boston, MA-U.S.A.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

On leadersheep..

An effective leader needs to practice what she preaches, to own the espoused values and be a role model.

The essence of leadership needs to be value based. The values exist in the business environment and need to be made to "work"; the core values need to translate to concrete business practices that the individual and the organization prides itself for. The “leader at work” needs to provide a single window view of this, in order to provide a guiding light for others to set their employeeship context. The context setting also involves building the sense of positioning: in terms of business, organization and the individual. The organizational vision sets the target and that target is translated by an effective leader into personal practices that stand out as guiding posts for others to emulate, and in due time become the processes of the organization. The vision in this case evolves and is not "given". The natural leadership evolves in this way and sets the broader context for others to function in.

The other business aspect that a leader must handle is the change. The adaptability of individual to handle change is the key to effective management. This requires keeping alive to the "movement of cheese" and ways to make ones own cheese, both at individual and at the organizational level. Men are not mice, wealth is created and not "just there"; the creation of wealth for customer translates to creation of wealth for the organization and the individual as well. This requires coaching, mentoring of people by an effective leader. That helps to create a shared environment of excellence where customer wealth creation is the key. The practices, both personal and the organization are a result of this.

Lastly, an effective leader gradually makes herself redundant! She grooms people to grow, to take responsibility and ownership, to take her role(s), such that she can move forward and the organization can move forward.

This time, it is different,

No longer does it gnaw at my heart with the monotonous ache,

The pounding of heart is amiss, the fires that lit the spirit lie slovenly in the dying embers,

The shadows this time are larger,

Oft I traversed the path of the fires that I lit,

This time it traverses me, slowly in hiding, between the dull flickers,

This sickness, my nausea doesn’t permit me even the martyr’s song nor the simmering shame of the guilt,

I can’t even light up my world, burn into bright light of all consuming despair,

It isn’t active like the volcano that pulls the ashen pain from the womb of the earth,

and throw it in the face of the world,

My pain lies frozen, hiding between the embers that refuse to die.

My eyes are tired, the dull fever is coming now,

My refusal to meet his gaze is wearing me down,

He refuses to go away, my sense of self,

The chisel head carved some beautiful lines on the virgin,

oft we carved it together, the image of pity, of sacrifice,

Of the one who bore the son of God. We ceaselessly tore the space away from the shape that we held,

The castaways still hurt my feet.

A castaway of my own being, I am.
Trek Report: NarayanSwamy Ashram
Let me start with a brief summary of our trip to hills. We started off from Delhi on Thursday night from Red fort (since we couldn't get any train reservations in time) in a bus to Khatima, the infamous town of Uttrakhand agitation. The journey took about 10 hours and we reached pretty sleepy and restless to this grimy and dusty town. We took a shared cab to Tanakpur, some 30 kms from Khatima. The drive into hills started from Tanakpur (the last railhead on this sector) and some 150 kms and about 6 hours later (some road sections were broken) we reached Pithoragh and checked into the TRC. The room had a fascinating view of the hills right from the bed. Three large windows provided the three different perspectives of hills and the Pithoragh valley, which is like a miniature Kashmir (some 8*6 Kms long/wide about 10 times less than Kashmir). We had some sumptuous brunch and followed it with a short exploration of nearby market (which was horrible!).

Having slept well, knowing that there was no transport available the next day (being Holi), we woke up to hot chai and AKPs (aloo ka Parathas!), served right into your bed with scenes changing at all windows. After devouring the breakfast we started off to a short trek to a place called Chandak, famous for a temple named "MashtaManav" (we corrupted it to Mast-manav!). The place had about 5-7 houses and a beautiful temple of Kali. We found a bunch of colourful (holi, remember!) Botias (folks from Tibet) singing some melodious bhajans. We walked around the place and were rewarded with beautiful views of entire Panchachuli massif, Mana and very brilliant Nanda Devi east as well as the main Nanda devi peaks. A tea break with a 109 year old ascetic completed our visit. He told us some very interesting stories about Moti Lal Nehru and Swami Vivekananda, which is another subject-head in my memoirs! We returned to our base camp of Pithoragh and ventured into the market to hunt for the Pithoragarh fort, which was a not so impressive ruin. The market place has something interesting for us. They had a very unique dance going on in the town square, which they called "Khadi Holi". The men and children move in a circle with each semi circle group taking turns to sing and dance, all the while moving very gracefully in a quartet step. definitely a dance to be learnt when you retire.

Well, since we had been stranded in Pithoragarh for the day, we rounded off the day with a brief survey of all high points in the town. The "valley" is actually a huge valley surrounding a majestic hill called "AsurChulha", which has a nonfunctional air strip at its base. (the Naini air strip). The valley is beautiful except for a ugly 400 KV line cutting across one side. The other side (the North west) has lush green fields all over with a high school in the middle of it. We returned very tired to our TRC to yet another gluttony session!

The next day we started early to a place called Dharchula, a town bordering Nepal (called Darchula) some 100 Kms from Pithoragh. The entire route is quite picturesque with Kali river forming the border between Nepal and India. One can see both sides of the river for more than 50Kms of the drive. Dharchula is a small hill town with a riverside TRC, where one mr. Mehra was very gracious to help and advice us on our further plans. Post lunch, we moved some 42 Kms to a village called Ghasku and persuaded two kids to join us for a trek to Narayan Swamy Ashram. This is the first stop on the Kailash-Mansoravar Yatra and considered the toughest stretch. Vishal and Prakash were excellent guides and regaled us with stories about the Yatra, village gossip and the employment issues. The trek was very steep, but we managed a decent timing of 2.5 hours, even though it rained during the last half an hour.(it did impress these kids, at least!). Narayan Swamy ashram is a beautiful place atop a hill with views of Pachachuli, Annapurna massif, Tibetian side himalayas, trishul, hathi parvat among others. At about 9000 feet altitude, the air is cold and the sky is afire at night! One cannot believe that great bear or scorpio are so clear; the Sirius (the dog star) is like a huge lantern! We spent the night in the temple dorm with a gentleman from Nasik.

I was woken up by excited better_half who had already finished a film roll clicking the sunrise..Well! a man has to do...started this old engine and off we went to click more photos...We left about a few hours later and started downhill.....The downhill trek was done in a cool 1.5 hrs and there we were at the Gasku village socializing with the kids and watching the nepal side of the hills across the kali river.

An hour long drive took us to Dharchula and we had a well made Maggi with veggies at the TRC for rs. 20 (and a tip of 30 rs!). We crossed over to Nepal only to be stopped by the Royal Nepalese Army, who suspected me of being a "foreigner"! My fluent hindi convinced them otherwise and we moved around the shore of Kali pitying the conditions there. It seemed very primitive and poor. Anyhow, we completed our 15 minutes of "foreign trip" and came back to take the last cab to Pithoragarh. At about 25Kms from Pithoragarh, at about 8 P.M when everyone was kinda tired and drowsy, I got one of the most pleasant shocks of my life!! Right in front of us was a full grown Leopard lazying on the roadside!! I felt like pouncing on it and cuddling it! The driver didn't share my enthusiasm and drove away (he had suffered a leopard pouncing and trying to cuddle him!). Well we reached the TRC Pithoragarh tired and were accommodated in the PWD inspection house (rs 100 for the night!). The next day saw us undertaking a 223 Kms hill journey for about 7 hours from Pithoragarh to Almora via Lohaghat and further down from Almora to Haldwani. An upgrade to 3 tier A.C and an overnight journey saw us back in Delhi yesterday.
Here is the first hand account of the hutch world half marathon.

With prize money of 150K USD, it indeed is a great deal of prize money for the shorter version of the road race. Usually, the big bucks are reserved for full marathon winners and half marathoners get the consolation prizes! The Delhi marathon has a prize money of 310K USD with most of money going to the winners of the 42 K race (e.g. the male winner wud get 55K).
Coming back to the hutch half marathon, the online registrations were smooth but some of the friends didn't get acks for their registrations over sms. A bunch of friends, we had been running off and on and actually did some serious training during the last 45 days or so. Some of us r still targeting a full marathon in Bombay, so this was more of an intermediate race. One week before the race, we had our last long run and then we were taking it easy. Our last long runs were 25/23/16/4/3/0 Kms respectively for 5 of us!! We were in festive mode on 12th, the day of collection of bibs, championchip and "goody" bags. At Jawahar lal Nehru stadium, there was hardly any rush and we collected our goodies, championchip and got a huge discount on stuff by New Balance (shoes etc.). Predictably, our 3k and 0k friends backed out of the race, that left four of us warming up on a pleasent sunday morning at the stadium.

We were flagged off at 7:45 A.M as excited runners actually broke through barriers to get a good start. Anyhow, the crowd thinned down just about at the 2nd Km mark near the Oberoi hotel, the first water station. I was running at about 6 minutes/Km and feeling not-so-good! We turned on to the long stretch to pragati maidan where we turned towards Bhairon marg and went behind the maidan and onto the ring road. That section was the worst section of the route where we crossed the railwayline, crossed a flyover and finally turned around the Raj Ghat... Passing the Ambedkar Stadium, we reached the ITO at about 10 Km mark. We turned right towards the Supreme Court and the scenery changed to better. Now, people were suffering! Three of us were warmed up and actually enjoying the run now. I just noticed that I had missed my target of completing the race in under 2 hrs, so I stayed relaxed and ran at an even pace conserving for the last 5 Kms. We ran towards the raisana hill and turned around from the Vijay Chowk. One of the most beautiful vistas in the world is the one in front of the Presidential estate till India gate. The sun was rising and we were running towards India Gate, it was getting quite hot and now most runners had started to walk! and we were overtaking them by bulk! The live bands from all the three defense services were playing for us! That was more than necessary inspiration that we needed. We turned around the India Gate towards Golf Course and then further back to Jawahar LaL Nehru Stadium. The last portion of the run was bit of a problem as the joy run of 7.5 Kms had also started and we had people all over slowing us down. My partner spend 25 minutes to finish her last three kms! Anyway, we finished the run in great spirits returning a timing of 1:58/2:16/2:40/3+. with two of us in top hundred and one of us in top fifty (women). We had a great time and even the guy who had never run more than 4 Kms, walked/ran the entire 21.097 Kms! that showed character and he became our hero on that day. We got "real" medals for finishing and our timing certificates the same day.
This one fine lady,
albeit, a bit lazy,
from the chinky land,
seems to end every day in frenzy!

avid and energetic was she,
when we flew past the emerald dal,
my muse was she..
over violent times and the lull,

She speaks through the radio,
the voice of the nation,
amidst the never ending show,
some mails can await amidst this commotion..

matters of muse and chinky land may spring...
a warm dusk and a friends mail...every week though!