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‘It’s not getting to the top of Everest that matters in life. It is how and why you get there’ — Lord Hunt, who led the first expedition to Mount Everest
THIS aptly describes the feat of Arunima Sinha, who earned the distinction of being the first woman with a prosthetic leg and the first amputee in India to reach the summit on May 21, 2013. Though the world acknowledged her feat after she conquered the world’s highest peak, scaling momentous mountains of crisis is nothing new for this 26-year-old petite girl from UP. Notwithstanding the firsts in her record, what makes her feat incredible is the fact that she started dreaming of achieving it while lying in a hospital bed in AIIMS barely two years ago with her left leg amputated and serious injuries on the rest of her body. Arunima’s story had hit the headlines first when she was thrown off a moving train in 2011 for resisting a chain-snatching attempt. She lost her left leg and a steel rod had to be put in her right leg to enable her to move. "While people visiting me in the hospital were sympathising with me and wondering how I will live a life dependent on others, my mind was just focusing on what was the most difficult thing that a human being could do. I wanted to do it and silence everyone who pitied me and my fate", says the gutsy gal. And the national level volleyball player didn’t let go of this dream as immediately after being discharged from the hospital she contacted Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to climb the Everest, with a request to train her. She started her training at Tata Steel Adventure Foundation-run camp in Uttarkashi in March 2012, and climbed peaks like 21,110 ft Mt. Chhamser Kangri over the next few months. But all this while her eyes were firmly set on the ultimate challenge for any mountaineer — the Mt. Everest. It posed a much bigger challenge in spite of all her training and earlier experiences. "In spite of my achievement and training climbing the Everest was not easy. The experience of this expedition was very different. I had trained for it for months and really wanted to do it, but the magnitude of the task that I had set for myself became clear to me once I actually started climbing. Even though I was confident and motivated, there were moments when the sheer enormity of the task intimidated me. But there was a magical inner strength that became the fountainhead of my energy and I was able to reach the top", says Arunima while sharing her experience in Nepal. "I could not match the speed of the rest of the team members and because of this most of the time it was as if I was climbing alone. There was a time when low oxygen level made my team leader suggest that I should return, but I insisted on moving on", she recalls. Each day of the 52-day-long journey was full of trials, as she shares, "While coming back my prosthetic slipped and I had to literally drag myself. I was in a lot of pain and could see my amputated limb bleed but I couldn’t take off my gloves or the prosthetic for the fear of getting frost bites. The feeling was very similar to what I had gone through after being thrown off the train in 2011. That time while lying on the tracks in a badly injured state I was wondering if I would live through the ordeal. Same emotions ran through my mind while I was inching my way back from the summit." However, conquering Everest is not the ultimate achievement for her as she has her eyes set on setting up a sports academy for the poor and physically challenged children in Unnao, UP. While her simplicity and humility are arresting, her fragile frame belies the grit and determination that fuels her. Talking to her one is reminded of the words of George Mallory "There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever (by climbing the Everest)... there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. That is what life means and what life is for."
India's first woman to climb the Everest, Bachendri Pal, has been Arunima’s mentor, trainer, and role model in this endeavour. Pal was the first person whom Arunima contacted after getting discharged from the AIIMS in 2011 and sought guidance for following her dream. "When she called me in 2011 and arrived in Jamshedpur within a day to meet me, I was really amazed at the determination of this young girl, but her first words to me that ‘I want to climb the Everest will you be able to help me in that’?, left me dumbstruck. Here was a girl who had just undergone the worst trauma that anyone can face in life and she was setting up such an enormous goal for herself. This positive spirit of hers made me agree to mentor and train her immediately and I asked her to join Tata Steel Adventure Foundation’s mountaineering training camp in Uttarkashi," says Pal. "Initially she was given a trainer to help her learn the basics of mountain climbing, but soon enough she was on her own. From then on she never looked back and kept on moving upward and forward. Actually, her performance at the camp was better than that of the other participants whether it was her fitness level or adapting to the limited facilities available at such camps. This made me believe more in her and I could make out that this girl would achieve what she had set out to do," says Pal, who closely monitored Arunima’s training all through. "After that, in order to test her skill I offered her to be a part of an expedition in Ladakh and sure enough she performed brilliantly and conquered Chamsher Kangri peak, which is 21,110 ft high, in September last year. She has tremendous mental power and has the ability to turn any adversity into an opportunity". An expedition to Everest costs anywhere around Rs 25-26 lakh besides other expenditure, so to cover the monetary aspect of her dream, Pal presented a proposal about her Everest expedition to the MD of her foundation with a brief profile of Arunima and it got an immediate go ahead. According to Pal an important part of Arunima’s training was the mental aspect as it was essential to keep her motivation levels high. "For her training, the utmost thing was to provide a homely atmosphere. When she came to me she just had a dream and needed someone to believe in her rather than feel sorry for her and this is what me and TSAF tried to provide her". In spite of her ‘special’ attachment with Arunima, one thing that Pal ensured that everyone around her followed strictly was not to give any concessions to her due to her disability. "When I went to see her off in Nepal, I made sure to tell the company that was in charge of the expedition not to treat her with any special concessions because of her disability as there is a general tendency among people to have pity for those in such a situation. I told them to respect her spirit and understand her needs with tolerance and patience, rather than smothering her with sympathy and pity. Her team needed to understand that she was no bechaari but an able equal". "She has discovered herself and her power through this passion of hers and has emerged as a role model for the physically challenged people all over the world. She has aptly proved that disability lies more in the mind than in body."
Soul Talk
Drivers & voice-to-text apps Texas A&M Transportation Institute has proved us all wrong. We were secure in the knowledge that by using voice-to-text apps, we are driving safely and do not pose a hazard to other drivers or to ourselves; a study has proved otherwise. No discernible difference was seen amongst texters who texted using hands while driving and those who texted using voice-activated text. It is equally distracting whatever your mode. Negative news on twitter The American Council on Science and Health has conducted a study that has proved that negative Twitter messages travel wide. Researchers at the Penn State University conducted a study focussing on vaccination related keywords during the H1N1 infection phase of 2009. The startling results show the vaccination stories about children that offered no hope were spread more quickly than the positive ones. With a data sample of 318,379 tweets, the swine flu vaccination tweets related to children further proved that not just negative tweets but also positive ones encouraged fellow tweeters to tweet negatively.
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IN a new study,
researchers of the Prew Research Centre, in association with KRC
Research, have found that about 75 per cent of women and about 63% of
men use social media when they are online. The research has
implications for social media sites as well as those who seek business
on such platforms. The study was centred on 2000 North American women
and studied their social media usage. They found that these women
enjoy their online social lives about as much as their real social
lives and slightly more so than going out and spending time with their
partners. The use of social media impacts the decision of these women.
Women who use social media are more likely to recommend brands to
their friends and family and also ask for recommendations when it
comes to buying products.