The best part of armchair discussions

A holiday at ‘Ivy Cottage’ on the outskirts of Dehradun; a quaint cottage with a beautiful garden full of flowering plants and trees, surrounded by hills, clouds scudding above.

Picture a group of five people with broad grins basking in pleasant sunshine - we are sitting around a breakfast table laden with empty plates and used cutlery, replete after a mammoth breakfast of eggs, sausages, toast, butter, jam, juice, fruit, gobi parathas and french fries. If you have sharp eyes or a strong imagination, you can see a shimmer of lazy contentment hovering around us and slowly expanding.

What do we select as an apt topic for conversation, sprawled out in our chairs, rendered nearly immobile by the amount of food we have gobbled – we discuss true stories of incredible hardship and adventure. ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer’ and ‘The Climb’ by Anatoly Boukreev – both accounts of an expedition to Mount Everest that ended in disaster; ‘Touching the void’ by Joe Simpson – another soul-stirring story of an expedition to the peak Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, and how Simpson survived in spite of numerous injuries; ‘Endurance : Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage’ by Alfred Lansing – about a trans-Antartic expedition by sea in which the ship sank, but the entire crew survived in hostile conditions for almost two years before finally journeying to safety.

At some point in our discussion, a few expressions turned sheepish and some of us lost a degree of animation as the contrast between our current condition and the stories we were discussing sank in. But then, as M pointed out, to admire something one doesn’t have to be experiencing it, neither to have experienced it oneself in the past. In fact, one’s admiration of those facing adverse circumstances is enhanced with the distance from the same.

Think of eating samosas at a nice cosy place, say Samovar (Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai), while reading one of these books; biting into the crispy part at the end and hearing it crackle just as you read about the crackle of ice on the Khumbu icefall (after Base Camp, Everest); imagining the cold at Everest’s feet while safely savouring the heat and crackle of a crisp samosa – the best of both worlds, wot ?

(Links to info about the books here :
Into Thin Air
The Climb
Touching the Void
Endurance : Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage )

By,
Zenobia Driver