HE: The Man Without Name

Probably, he might have been in his early twenties. He came to Kathmandu carrying a bag full of dreams– dreams of good education, money and good living. A hill boy from the remote place of Dhading had similar dreams like any other youths. He started dreaming a bit of dream everyday.

To support his living in the lone city, he started giving tuition classes to the school kids. That was the only thing he could do to compensate his immediate living. His tuition classes flourished, so did his luck. A fair skin, okay height, well spoken and energetic. A gentleman. The house owner liked him so much that he was accepted as a brother to the house lady. Now he had different identity in the same house that he had rented. The gharpeti didi and kotha ma basne bhai relationship changed into didi-bhai bond. And, also he moved from 'dai' to 'mama' to the house kids--closer and more affectionate relationship.

In two years time, he found a job in a brick factory. He was an accountant there. An educated person always looks for his growth wherever he goes. Growth is inevitable. The accountant-- ardent and hardworking-- became a partner investor in the same factory. After couple of years, he owned the factory. He was the sole investor. Akela malik.

Time passed. He built a nice house, married a beautiful woman. And, had children. The brick factory ownership, a beautiful house, more beautiful wife and lovely kids; his dreams never stopped here. He wanted better life, more money. How much money, he didn't know. But he wanted money. That he knew. He started investing in real state. How would a dreamer like him stay away from such a lucrative business?? The whole city was behind the real state. In another word, the city denizens was behind  the money behind the real state. He was one.

Two or three banks easily sanctioned his loan. Now, the man was ready for huge investment. The money flourished. He became ambitious. Like the beginners luck, he could make some profit from his new business. He became more ambitious. He was driven by money. He needed more money for huge investment. His beautiful house and some lands were mortgaged. His entire property, except his wife and kids, were given to banks temporarily, until he could make more money than what he had borrowed from the banks. It was a big risk and everyone knows investment never happens without the risk. He knew it well.

By now, he was not a beginner in the real state. And, if no beginner, no beginner's luck.

The policy of central bank curved the investment in the real state. As a result, the business plummeted heavily. The sale of the land and house stopped. Hard days for the investors. The highest interest rate gripped the throat of every investor. His throat too. The situation was expected to improve. But sometimes unexpected happens. Expected never happens. Lakhs of interest in every month was really a big burden. Actually a really really big burden. A year passed. Two year passed. The interest was more than the principle. The mortgaged house and lands were taken over by the banks. His property was banks' property. His principle of life was shattered by the interest and principle game of the banks.

He lost his house, land and fat bank account. Once he had threatened his kids, "Kotha basne ko chorachori sanga khelna naja" (Don't play with homeless kids). Now, he is threatened by his own threatening, "Kotha basne ko chorachori sanga khelna naja". 

He is homeless and rents a house nearby. 

He lost his house. He lost his name. He lost his identity. 

Haiku: Siddha Pokhari

Thousands of rain drops

over the pond

quench my thirst. 

Siddha Pokhari, Bhaktapur

Earthquake Devastated Nepal: Why are US Marines even over here ?

Steve Brothers 

I know that some people (though surely outside my enlightened circle of friends :)) in the US will have as their first reaction to the news of the loss of the Marines and the helicopter, "why are 'we' even over there?". I've already seen that and more ugly sentiments expressed on the internet.

The loss of the US Marines is painful. It's not hard to understand this sort of reflexive reaction to a loss of life that one personally identifies with. I get it.

So, "why", indeed? 

What follows is strictly my perspective it is also kind of long but if you don't know anything about Nepal or understand what's happening there - I think you will come away with a better understanding. That said, this is going to be grossly over simplified and brief because it is after all... a facebook post. I request the more academically inclined "old Nepal hands" in my circle of contacts to suspend their venerable capacity for nit-picking in light of the context here. So here goes... my thoughts on why the US is helping Nepal:

First of all... the US is one of the most generous, and helpful nations in the world in the wake of disasters. This is indisputable fact. "America" helps. Full stop. We will leave aside for the time being any qualifying remarks or in depth consideration of politics and geo-political stratagem, as that is beyond the scope of this discussion.

Next and quite essentially... let's get a sense of the geography. See the over lay of the outline of Nepal on the state of Kansas to get some perspective. Nepal is small. It is INCREDIBLY mountainous however. I think it's 17 of the world's 25 highest mountains, including Mt. Everest - the highest in the world, are in Nepal. Let that sink in. I've heard it said, but can't confirm, that if you flattened the topography of Nepal out with a rolling pin, removing all the earthy folds, deep valleys and snowy peaks... the flattened area would be as big as the US and Canada combined. Again... not sure about the precision of that assertion, but the point is that Nepal is a place of unparalleled and hyper-condensed topographical variation. What they call "hills" in Nepal, are mountains anywhere else.

Photo source: US Embassy, Kathmandu Facebook Page

Anyway... a CRUCIAL point in this brief explanation is the geographic location of Nepal. As you can see, it lies snugly between India and China. Further, the capital, Kathmandu is only 837 miles from Islamabad, Pakistan. Similarly, Nepal's capital is a mere 1,064 miles, as the crow flies, away from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. So as you can see, it's nestled right in between multiple nuclear powers and in a region of long standing tensions and conflicts.

Nepal is not an economic power house, it's a relatively poor country in financial terms -- the per capita annual income is $2,200. You read that right - avg. annual income is less than $2500 bucks A YEAR. Kathmandu and other big cities and towns are an economic anomaly in a region that is characterized more generally by subsistence agriculture. The main industry is really tourism. Interestingly, the US Embassy in Nepal is a HUGE, sprawling, high - walled compound - a veritable fortress. There's a lot of antennas on the roof. smile emoticon Keeping in mind the geography just discussed, I'll let you connect the dots.

Now, it's not just its geo-political proximity that make Nepal important.

Nepal has always been independent. It was never colonized. It does however have a "special" relationship with Britain, the premier colonial power of the region historically speaking, for the past 300 years or so.

Throwback to the Second World War, when an American soldier shared a cigar with a Gurkha rifleman, somewhere in the Italian countryside. (via The Gurkha Museum): Photo: Steve Brothers' Facebook

England, to this day, directly recruits Nepalese men into the British Army. Let that sink in as well. It says so much about so many things. But we'll focus on one - that being that Nepal is a nation of bad asses. It's really that simple. Nepal's soldiers are internationally renowned and have fought along side "Allied forces" in every major conflict going back to WW I and beyond. Nepali soldiers have spilled their blood along side Britons and Americans in battles from Europe in the first world war, to the Pacific theatre in WW II and of course more recently in Afghanistan, as a few examples. This is a unique and as far as I am aware... unparalleled type of relationship. So why would the UK, the US and others put troops at risk for Nepal? Well, it may not be the primary reason, but among other reasons... because Nepal has done it "for us", collectively speaking as citizens of allied powers, for at least a century.

They are an incredibly tough, and spirited people. A 65 year old Nepali lady in flip flops will scamper up a hill side with a 60 lb basket, secured to her back by a cloth band around her forehead, in half the time it would take most of us to make the same climb. She'll be squatting by her bundle, casually smoking a filterless cigarette at the top, by the time we arrive. No doubt considering, in polite silence, how you can be SO big, yet So damn weak. hahah! This is not "orientalism" or any other shade of exoticising the noble savage. Far from it, there's nothing savage about it... Nepal is the home of high culture, deep spiritual knowledge and amazing architectural and artistic wonders. 

The historical Buddha was born in Nepal, and it has in short so many distinguishing characteristics, and boasts such a condensed and concentrated loci of "wonders" that it truly is one of the most exceptional places on Earth. These exclamations of awe about Nepali character and stamina are not the patronizing ogling of brown people. I've got that piece of paper on the wall (actually tucked away in some drawer)... something about a degree in Anthropology and South Asian Studies, blah blah... I've been steeped in the academic gospel of cultural relativism and all that - I'm acutely aware of my "privilege", none of that is lost on me. But I've also been steeped in Nepal. I know Nepali people, their unfortunate government and dithering and corrupt civil service aside... to know them is to love them. Really. I've spent nearly half my life in Nepal, I don't feel special... I feel grateful. I'll always be a foreigner and have no pretensions about whatever degree of immersion I've enjoyed, and though perhaps it really is one of those, "you had to be there" things... but as a non-Nepalese, whether you've been there for 2 weeks or 40 years... you will understand that you've encountered something great. It's that simple.

This and so much more, are the reasons... as I see it, that the US effort is what it is, in Nepal. mic drop ? 

Photo Source: U.S Embassy, Kathmandu Facebook Page 

Steve can be contacted via his facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteveBrothers 

Left For Dead

On the evening of May 10, 1996, a killer blizzard exploded around the upper reaches of Mount Everest, trapping me and dozens of other climbers high in the Death Zone of the Earth’s tallest mountain.

The storm began as low, distant growl, and then rapidly formed into a howling white fog laced with ice pellets. It hurtled up Mount Everest to engulf us in minutes. We couldn't see as far as our feet. A person standing next to you just vanished in the roaring whiteout. Wind speeds that night would exceed seventy knots. The ambient temperature fell to sixty below zero.

The blizzard pounced on my group of climbers just as we’d gingerly descended a sheer pitch known as the Triangle above Camp Four, or High Camp, on Everest’s South Col, a desolate saddle of rock and ice about three thousand feet below the mountain’s 29,035- foot summit.

Eighteen hours earlier, we had set out from the South Col for the summit, heartened as we trudged along by a serene and cloudless night sky that beckoned us ever upward until dawn, when it gave way to a spectacular sunrise over the roof of the world.

Then confusion and calamity struck.

Of the eight clients and three guides in my group, five of us, including myself, never made it to the top. Of the six who summited, four were later killed in the storm. They included our thirty-five-year-old expedition leader, Rob Hall, a gentle and humorous New Zealander of mythic mountaineering prowess. Before he froze to death in a snow hole near the top of Everest, Rob would radio a heartbreaking farewell to his pregnant wife, Jan Arnold, at their home in Christchurch. Another sad fatality was diminutive Yasuko Namba, forty-seven, whose final human contact was with me, the two of us huddled together through that awful night, lost and freezing in the blizzard on the South Col, just a quarter mile from the warmth and safety of camp.

Four other climbers also perished in the storm, making May 10, 1996, the deadliest day on Everest in the seventy-five years since the intrepid British schoolmaster, George Leigh Mallory, first attempted to climb the mountain.

Severely frostbitten Beck 

May 10 began auspiciously for me. I was battered and blowing from the enormous effort to get that far, but I was also as strong and clearheaded as any forty-nine-year-old amateur mountaineer can expect to be under the severe physical and mental stresses at high altitude. I already had climbed eight other major mountains around the world, and I had worked like an animal to get to this point, hell-bent on testing myself against the ultimate challenge.

I was aware that fewer than half the expeditions to climb Everest ever put a single member– client or guide– on the summit. But I wanted to join an even more select circle, the fifty or so people who had completed the so-called Seven Summits Quest, scaling the highest peaks on all seven continents. If I summited Everest, I would have only one more mountain to go.

I also knew that approximately 150 people had lost their lives on the mountain, most of them in avalanches. Everest has swallowed up several dozen of these victims, entombing them in its snowfields and glaciers. As if to underscore its vast indifference to the whole mountain-climbing enterprise, Everest mocks its dead. The glaciers, slowly grinding rivers of ice, carry climbers’ shattered corpses downward like so much detritus, to be deposited in pieces, decades later, far below.

Common as sudden, dramatic death is among mountain climbers, no one actually expects to be killed at high altitude. I certainly didn’t, nor did I ever give much thought to whether a middle-aged husband and father of two ought to be risking his neck in that way. I positively loved mountain climbing: the camaraderie, the adventure and danger, and–to a fault– the ego boost it gave me.

I fell into climbing, so to speak, a willy-nilly response to a crushing bout of depression that began in my mid-thirties. The disorder reduced my chronic low self-regard to a bottomless pit of despair and misery. I recoiled from myself and my life, and came very close to suicide.

Then, salvation. On a family vacation in Colorado I discovered the rigors and rewards of mountain climbing, and gradually came to see the sport and rewards of mountain climbing, and gradually came to see the sport as my avenue of escape. I found that a punishing workout regimen held back the darkness for hours each day. Blessed surcease. I also gained hard muscle and vastly improved my endurance, two novel sources of pride.

Once in the mountains (the more barren and remote, the better), I could fix my mind, undistracted, on climbing, convincing myself in the process that conquering world-famous mountains was testimony to my grit and manly character. I drank in the moments of genuine pleasure, satisfaction and bonhomie out in the wilds with my fellow climbers.

But the cure eventually began to kill me. The black dog slunk away at last, yet I persisted in training and climbing and training and climbing. High-altitude mountaineering, and the recognition it bought me, became my hollow obsession. When my wife, Peach, warned that his cold passion of mine was destroying the centre of my life, and that I was systematically betraying the love and loyalty of my family, I listened but did not hear her.

The pathology deepened. Increasingly self-absorbed, I convinced myself that I was adequately expressing my love for my wife, daughter and son by liberally seeing to their material needs, even as I emotionally abandoned them. I’m eternally grateful that they did not, in turn, abandon me, although with the mountain of insurance I’d taken out against the possibility of an accident, I should have hired a food taster.

In fact, with each of my extended forays into the wild, it became clearer, at least to Peach’s unquiet mind, that I probably was going to get myself killed, the recurrent subtext of my life. In the end, that’s what it took to break the spell. On May 10, 1996, the mountain began gathering me to herself , and I slowly succumbed. The drift into unconsciousness was not unpleasant as I sank into a profound coma on the South Col, where my fellow climbers eventually would leave me for dead.

Peach received the news by telephones at 7:30 A.M. at our home in Dallas.

Then, a miracle occurred at 26,000 feet. I opened my eyes.

My wife was hardly finished with the harrowing task of telling our children their father was not coming home when a second call came through, informing her that I wasn’t quite as dead as I had seemed.

Somehow I regained consciousness out on the South Col– I don’t understand how– and was jolted to my senses, as well as to my feet, by a vision powerful enough to rewire my mind. I am neither churchly nor a particularly spiritual person, but I can tell you that some force within me rejected death at the last moment and then guided me, blind and stumbling-literally a dead am walking– into camp and the shaky start of my return to life.

Beck Weathers, the gregarious Texan climber went snow-blind in the Death Zone and spent a night out in the open during a blizzard that took the lives of nine colleagues in 1996. Miraculously he survived.  Beck has become a much sought-after speaker before profession, corporate and academic audiences. 

This excerpt is taken from Left For Dead: My Journey Home From Everest authored by Beck Weathers with Stephen G. Michaud.