There is always another summit to climb : A personal ramble about Les Sommet des Dieux

 Hello there (as Obi-Wan would dramatically enact).

There are a few questions to address before we embark on another blog, another one of those projects that I will find myself visiting irregularly.

1. What about Pencil in a Loop, Bishnu?

Great question. For context, Pencil in a Loop was a blog and more importantly, a journey that I embarked upon sometime during 2021(?) and it was a collection of my ruminations and ramblings about albums that I liked, musicians I hold in reverence, and in essence share my tiny corner of the world to...well, the world. More of a passion project, less of a journal - I deleted the blog along with its contents sometime around 2023. Yes, I was reprimanded for it but one of the writings in that blog was actually published in the Articulate webzine - so that's a small win, I suppose?

2. What is this blog about then?

Let me be honest - I have no idea. It is supposed to be my alternative to journaling. My mentor, whose name I will withhold, asked me about how I dealt with my anxiety. I had no answer, or rather it was some incoherent mumble about how I simply sleep it off. Yet, sometimes deep within us, the emotions seem to grow and expand and multiply until it completely takes over your life. I guess, this is my attempt to understand and evaluate how the culture around me - music, narratives, and the like - have allowed me to express myself better, and more importantly, provide that necessary space where the voices in my head will simply shut off.

Tl;dr : This is a journal.

So, as the great Fabrizio Romano said, "Here we go."

1. George Mallory and the 1924 Expedition

The discussion began on a particularly irritating summer afternoon as three friends, surrounded by plates of butter naan, one chicken preparation, and an additional paneer dish discussed about the possibility of an Everest expedition. All of us aged twenty seven (well, I was twenty six, and about to turn a year older in six days) were speculating. For the sake of brevity, let us call the other dramatic personae at this table as V and R. The latter spoke about his desire to ascend the summit without supplemental oxygen.

I simply wanted to summit. A lot of it again comes from my mentor who has been at the peak himself and spoke of how fear drives us forward to do things rather than simple courage. That is not the scope of this discussion, however. It is a tale I shall narrate another day.

Two days later, another character is added to the mix : a character called D. He speaks of his experiences in hiking and murmurs an assent to the ascent, chalks out a plan, discusses routes, and puts on a tentative year sometime into the future as a possible timeline to carry out this expedition.

While we were enamored by the exploits of one Reinhold Messner, our story begins in 1924 as does the story of Les Sommet des Dieux. It also begins with the supposed story that was narrated to me by a tutor when I was in the sixth standard.

Whether this story is true, nobody knows. It goes like this :

The two principal characters of the 1924 expedition were George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. When the former was asked about his reasons to climb the tallest peak in the world, he simply said, "Because it's there."

Les Sommet which begins with the clip of Mallory and Irvine on their way to make the final ascent, leaves it to speculation if the two climbers did manage to reach the top of the world. The object that begins the narrative however, and sets one of the protagonists on a quest. This particular object in question is the camera that belonged to Mallory - and it is now in the possession of Habu, a man with the sole determination to climb the southwestern face of Mt. Everest in the winter.

I will not talk much about the film - I earnestly request you to watch the same. This talks about why I gush about the movie so much and why it has become a ritual to watch the same during my spells of anxiety.

2. The Mountains were always there.

I grew up in Siliguri - at the foothills of the Darjeeling Himalayas. While I cannot actively recall my first visit to Darjeeling, it was not until my first year as a postgraduate student that I was fully able to take in the grandeur of Kanchenjunga. However, it was not from the Tiger Hill viewpoint which is a much more popular location. The sky was blue, pristine and precise, and on the road outside our hotel in Peling, I stared at the peak. This was in Sikkim - I was on a vacation with my family and we were on our way to visit Rabdentse. Yet, no memory has a firm foothold in my mind that staring at Kanchenjunga and feeling extremely humbled.

During the pandemic, despite the fact that the growing obstruction to verticality in the form of apartments and residences have sprung up, I did manage to catch a glimpse of the Kanchenjunga from my rooftop. It did not bear the same impact as that day on Peling but I seem to have been calmed by it.

My reading list often involves reading about mountaineering - the writings of Mallory, books by Messner, a beautiful history of exploring the Everest (including the story of how its height was calculated by the Trigonometrical Survey of India and the efforts of one Radhanath Sickdar), and numerous documentaries on the challenges associated with the same.

It was therefore no surprise that Les Sommet would appeal to me in the same way as these works across various medium have done. Yet, it seemed to have made an impact.

Is it because it arrived at a particularly vulnerable moment in my life? Is it because I was discussing Everest with a close group of friends? Does it have to do with the desire to be better, be greater, and more importantly, to not feel so intensely all the time?

The answer was simpler. Far simpler, than I had thought.

3. Discussions and Deliberations

My friends will testify that I am an extrovert, and I will agree that the vocal chords seem to emerge with a ferocity when the company is comfortable.

Yet, I will present a contradictory claim. I am mostly quiet, and occasionally, I seek conversation. It is indeed my good fortune that I am surrounded by a warm coterie of people who have always listened, advised, and been objective while my nerves have been crippled by the voices in my head. It is also this voice in my head that prohibits me from talking to people or reaching out to them. Sleep it off, play some videogames, how about listening to Tool - the cacophony becomes a chorus, the chorus becomes a singularly booming baritone that keeps reminding me about how everything I have desired will never come to fruition.

It is this idea which scares me the most.

Les Sommet begins with the story of a failure - a supposed failure because the deliberation still persists if Mallory and Irvine ever made it to the summit. It also ends with the story of Habu reaching a certain conclusion (watch the film to know). Yet, the story of the photographer, Makoto Fukamachi continues. The final shot is him, looking at the peak, glistening in the sunlight, with white snow and scraggly edges. He looks at the world around him, and the title of the film appears in the end credits.

In life, I have always felt the need to succumb what others wanted of me - a certain examination to ace, a mode of discipline to sustain, and more importantly, to uphold certain ideals that were never mine. Some of them are important and  have led me to where I am right now, but the question that always haunts me is this - is this really what I am meant to do?

I have started to write after a long hiatus of four years and while I admit that I am still rough around the edges - watching Les Sommet filled me with a new lease of life. There is still a great uncertainty that hangs over my head as I choose to move towards an intended purpose - the burnout has slowly seeped all over my veins, I wake up feeling half the person that I was, and I wake up more anxious and nervous than I have ever felt.

So, what was it that Les Sommet awakened in me?

That very idea. Because it's there.

I feel intensely about things because it is there. To live without passion is mundane. Yet, if that passion does not reciprocate in some form or shape, it hurts. It hurts because the passion still persists and we keep going at it - headlong, slowly building up at the experience, making every failure count till it finally reaches the summit.

Is the summit really the end, however?

The final monologue of Les Sommet goes like this :

"Why ever climb higher? Be the first? Why risk death? Why do something so futile? I know why now. There doesn't need to be a reason. For some, the mountains aren't a goal, but a path. And the summit, a step. Once there, all that's left is to keep going."

That is what struck me on that night, and on nights like this, where life seems so futile.

Just keep going - it's there, and so are you.