On 28th March, 2019, I was invited to speak at a TedX event organized by the Jadavpur University. The title of my talk was- ' Re-imagining the Future of the Indian Adventurer'. Here it is:
Here is the text of my talk along with the illustrations that I used that day.
Re-imagining The Future Of The Indian Adventurer
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
Perhaps
today my objective, above anything else, is to share a perspective. As we
re-imagine the future in our own different ways, my personal motivation to do
so, was simply to learn more and to explore- both what lies out there, and what
I can find within myself.
To satiate
that urge I resorted to adventure, and I found that it answered in unexpected,
mysterious, yet beautiful ways. Over the past 20 years I learnt that a life of
adventure, like a few other noble pursuits, demands a long and devoted
apprenticeship, physical, as well as philosophical. I also learnt that adventure makes you a
better human being, who can actually contribute to better understanding of our
everyday lives.
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| Source: Internet |
“Is that
really what adventure is about?”, you might think. Given the relentless
onslaught of stereotypes from various mass media, we might have fostered our
own image of an adventure with inevitable biases. The photo above is an example of a modern day advertisement inviting clients on a journey to
the North Pole. The text accompanying the photo reads like this : - “What's an
intrepid adventure traveler to do when they've already visited all seven
continents, climbed Kilimanjaro, hiked the Inca Trail,
and sailed the Galapagos Islands? Why, visit the North Pole of
course! Not many people realize that it
is actually possible to make the journey to the very top of the world, but for
those who are adventurous enough – and have plenty of cash..."
As Cathy O'Dowd once wrote, apparently,
adventure seems to be a statement full of superlatives and benchmarks. The
cliches abound, all of them look great pasted on a sunrise stock photo in a
jazzy font, and uploaded to social media. Underlying all of them is the same
message: the only thing holding you back is yourself. If only you had more
confidence and courage, you too could be living a life of grand adventure. For
some it’s an inspiring call to action. For others it’s a demoralizing judgment
– your failure to live this exciting life is entirely your fault. How then,
does this sudden ‘beckoning out of stagnation’ envision what ‘you’ should be
doing?
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| Source: Internet |
What ‘should’
your adventure look like? How can it be anything better than a boisterous claim
to glory? How can you render it ‘meaningful’?
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
In order to
perform a meaningful adventure one need not spend a fortune, nor travel to the
furthest corners of the globe. All we need is a little imagination! In the
following slides I will share glimpses of some of the adventures that I
imagined and how in the end those imaginations gave birth to ‘meaningful’ and ‘original’
adventures.
One of them
began with a Bengali classic. As much as it appealed to my wonder as a child, a
thoughtful inspection much later unearthed actual history, characters and
context that had opened up fresh perspectives for the perceptive reader to
relish- as any well-written book should. In this book, the protagonist’s dreams
revolving around the account of an expedition to the ‘mountains of the moon’
led to his own adventure of self-discovery and the discovery of his own meaning
for the ‘mountains of the moon’.
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| Source: Internet |
As
mentioned, the account narrated the exploits of a certain Duke of Abruzzi, who
I checked had been a pioneering explorer of the Rwenzori mountains, Uganda,
around the same time as Bibhutibhushan indicated. The Rwenzori and its legends
date back to Ptolemy, who had been the one to christen it ‘The mountains of the
Moon’. The story unravels in exciting ways as Shankar, the protagonist, finds
himself in adventures that take him to South Africa, in the Richtersveldt.
Meanwhile, I was cast away on an equally exciting journey of how these clues
and references added up almost coincidentally; for the names and events and
places were all falling into an almost parallel, unforeseen adventure.
It seemed as if when Shankar’s ‘mountains of
the moon’ remained a metaphor across the course of his adventures, a new
adventure was laid out for me: retracing the clues from the story to embark on
the trail of ‘those Mountains’ that ‘inspired’ the protagonist.
I found this
idea captivating enough to actually set out and climb in the Rwenzoris
themselves, with the overarching goal being completing shankar’s quest to find
the mountains of the moon.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
The journey
being but merely the means to an end so enthralling, is what I find the motive
for such an adventure, and NOT, merely the byproduct- wherein I became the
‘first’ from India to scale a mountain in that range. The latter
is just another representative of what one is exposed to being hailed as
adventure, but in essence isn’t worth even considering it akin to one.
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| Source: Internet |
Thus in
spirit, adventure serves to satiate curiosity, to cherish the pursuit of the
uncharted, the untrodden- until what seemed a mystery is all understood. The
closest I came to interpret this ‘intrigue for the uncharted’ was in the
writings of Eric Shipton, who coined the term, ‘Blank On The Map’. Shipton was one
of the fabled Shipton-Tilman duo that shaped the exploratory history of the
Himalaya in the 30s. Having developed an appetite for these blanks across the
course of my career in the Himalaya, I couldn’t help but be sanguine about
these ‘blanks’ lingering ‘elsewhere’.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
In
particular, I was curious about the Eastern thresholds of the Himalayas where
the three great rivers- Irawaddy, Salween and Jinsha run almost alongside each
other, until the Jinsha takes two drastic meanders on its own course. I recalled
being privy to a friend’s remark that the latter bend of the river’s track
encloses a certain snow capped range of mountains, one that possibly had
remained untrodden, or even undocumented to this date. The blank on the map
suddenly became more conspicuous. What imagination serves for an adventure to
ensure its feasibility stands much more profound than, perhaps what a strong
corporate backup or administrative relaxations can accomplish.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
It was in
fact possible for me to successfully explore, and document an entirely unknown
mountain range, alone, with a budget that seems only too meagre for such a
venture. Contrary to a commonplace but firm notion, the suffocating
administrative vigilance of the Chinese State was hardly an impediment to a
solitary traveler probing into uncharted places, asking questions, delving
almost heinously deeper than what conventional tourists can reach.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
It should
hardly be a surprise if this adventure, fuelled by passionate imagination and
little else, held more revelations than just what intrigues Geologists or
climbers. The world confides its secrets more in a traveler, it seems; for in
the shadow of these alien mountains is nestled a village, a populace of a disappearing
race.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
The
so-called ‘Black Lolos’ are a dying people, victims of an all-devouring
cultural conflict imposed by the often state-enforced Han ethnic dominance.
With civilization still remaining an obscurity to these people, plightful
aspects that are shared by all minorities across the world surfaced before me.
Inquiry along the horizons of my previous curiosities drew out more discovery
than I could foresee. Such are the rewards of true adventure.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
Imagination
inspires adventure, unraveling discoveries that serve not so much to confound
as to instruct. Almost in consequence, as one seeks to explore the world he
explores himself in a new light. The fascination with Africa was awakened not
merely from my experience at Rwenzori, but rather much before that. In 2012,
when a swelling cascade of inspiration as well as a surging enthusiasm to
expand my avenues of adventure persuaded me to visit the continent, I suddenly
found more room to explore. As I rode a bicycle across 4500kms, through five countries
at the heart of Africa, I found myself plunging into a breathtaking collage of
culture, landscape and stories. The pulsating cradle of our species inevitably
sought my attention years after, extending prospects of new journeys; and as
the continent’s extensive image lay strewn across my mind, for all I had seen
across its heart, the vast Sahara reminded me of the immenseness that I had
missed.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
Determined to
see how I fared- against lifeless expanses of nothingness, to experience
solitude at its ghastliest, I set myself a route. Inspiration moulds reality,
and true to my inspiration- I rode across the Sahara from Morocco to Senegal-
through the Western Sahara and Mauritania. This obscure, sand beaten highway
spans the breadth of the desert across four nations, and seemed to be the least
terrorist prone in recent history.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
Habitation,
though dispersed and scant, was ideally spread for a lone traveler to sustain
himself. Neither piercing sand nor battering gusts are insurmountable- nor is
nothingness nearly as unbearable as it seems.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
But the only
unbearable affliction was the one- ‘humans subjected me to’. In a certain
section of Mauritania, the ethnic majority of inhabitants are a people called ‘White
Moors’, owing to their relatively pallid complexion against the denizens of
Sahara. Even as quaint as it seems today, open, rampant racism exists amongst
them for clear reasons.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
Astonishingly
enough, an adventure taught me what it feels like to be a ‘victim of such
discrimination’, to be hated personally without any particular reason, to be
shunned, looked at with contempt and disgust, even to have rocks flung at me.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
As I crossed
the borders into sub-saharan familiar ground, the old friendliness seemed as
welcoming as the reward of seeing new perspectives had been enriching.
Adventure taught me about being human more than what books could convey.
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| Image: Anindya Mukherjee |
Adventure
has reinforced my way of forming ideas about this wide world that we share. The
imaginations of adventurers, once executed, has a certain efficacy in causing
realization, that little else in life can offer. The undaunted refusal to
remain stagnant isn’t merely a prerequisite to knowledge, but also a channel of
obtaining it. The way an eager mind assimilates wisdom is augmented when the
beholder seeks to explore; for in his heart he has seen diversity, found bliss
in uncertainty, and learnt to appreciate the wide, unearthly contrasts of life
across a spectrum of lands and cultures. He is sensitive and academic, and his
opinions bear the force of a conglomeration of a myriad of experience. His
perspective, amidst the wealth of our race’s cumulative knowledge, is what
shall shape our collective future.
*****