| December 8, 1997 | ||
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BOOKS Death on the Summit A Everest survivor's gripping account of one of the worst mountaineering tragedies. By Vijay Jung Thapa
May 10, 1996, was no different. There were 30 expeditions of various sizes and degrees of competence at Base Camp. Out of these, 10 were commercial ventures run by professional adventure-travel guides whose clients, many of whom were relatively inexperienced, had forked out as much as $70,000 (about Rs 27 lakh) each to be led up the mountain. Rob Hall, a respected New Zealand mountaineer and four-time Everest summiteer, reputed to run the tightest and safest such commercial outfit, said, "With enough determination, any idiot can get up this hill. The trick is to get back down alive." By the next morning, sudden thunderstorms would have killed 12 men and women, including Hall -- the worst single-season death toll on the Everest. Into Thin Air chronicles this tragedy with brutal honesty. Its author Jon Krakauer was a member of Hall's expedition and one of the many who climbed the summit on that fateful day. The book raises contentious questions about such guided ascents which started a few years ago. Should one allow inexperienced clients who clog up the fixed ropes and become a serious hazard for the rest? Is mountaineering reduced to a thrill-seeking sport for the wildly rich who fantasise of adventure stunts like being guided up the tallest mountain in each continent? Should Hall's Adventure Consultants, because of rivalry with other outfits, encourage recklessness and ignore turnaround deadlines -- beyond which it becomes dangerous to keep climbing -- so that they can advertise that they put the most number of persons on the summit? Krakauer doesn't spell out the answers. Yet, this troubling book seems to scream aloud the need for some sanity like banning the use of oxygen altogether, which would dissuade weaker climbers. Krakauer is a fine, thought-provoking writer who spins haunting metaphors of the modern mountaineering world. There are satellite phones everywhere, masses of electronic equipment are hauled up and down the slopes; and dispatches of death break out live on the Web every hour or so. Hall, in fact, trapped in the storm with one of his clients, manages, just before he dies, to speak to his wife in New Zealand over satellite phone and radio. "I love you. Sleep well, my sweetheart. Please don't worry too much," were his last words. And that's the basic lesson. In all this jumble one tends to forget the ferocious nature of the mountain. You can be hooked up on the Web, talk to anyone over the phone, have the latest high-tech gear but the Everest can still win. n A sketchy though tantalising look at India's silver screen. By Madhu Jain Why do books on popular Indian cinema end up like a series of trailers for the real thing: promising everything but giving only tantalising tidbits? This could have been an insightful look at the dream machine that is Bollywood. Ever since popular culture became a must-do for Indian scholars, Hindi cinema has become a subject for dissection; unfortunately, much of it is packaged in dense and turgid jargon. And when it's not intellectuals and students of serious cinema temporarily slumming in popular culture, there are those pathetic attempts by film journalists who whip up instant biographies of film icons and quickie movie histories. Kazmi, with a perceptive eye and an ability to spot a trend, falls in between. These are just cryptic postcards from the movies. Asides, really. The book promises to look into the myth-making which goes on behind the silver screen, but it only gives, in all too often a jump-start way, glimpses; and takes a tourist guide-book approach to cinema. The author divides her book into four parts: "The Feminine Mystique", "Men Can, Men Should", "When Zeros Become Heroes" and "Directors' Special". And into even more glib-sounding chapters. Dilip Kumar: "Love Denied is Love Desired", Shammi Kapoor: "A Gentleman's Jungle Book", to name a few. Bollywood in easy soundbites. There are interesting themes here: the evolution of the feminine mystique and the way women have been projected on the screen (how she could have left out Rekha is puzzling), the evolution of the angry young hero -- Kazmi has also looked at the sociological underpinnings by attempting to place films in their political and social contexts. But she moves too fast; her encapsulation of the themes and trends are a bit too glib. And all too often looks at Hindi films and icons through the lens of thinkers like Roland Barthes.
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For most of the year, a jet stream of hurricane-force
winds blast the striated rock and ice summit of the Everest, sending forth a plume of ice
crystals that trails into the sky like a long silk scarf. But in early May, the approach
of the south-west monsoon from the Bay of Bengal forces this jet stream further north over
Tibet. This ushers in a brief window of clear weather when the highest point in the world
is at its most hospitable. It also attracts, as in recent times, hordes of would-be
summiteers -- some of them highly skilled mountaineers, some totally inept even to climb
modest peaks and a spattering of publicity-hungry socialites. 
