At the camp one of the evening activities for all of us used to be to sit together out in the open in a large circle and listen to various mountaineering or adventure stories from the elders who were our trainers. Some of the stories were of the spooky kind too. In that group of elders, a gentleman arrived perhaps on the second day, whom every one was calling Sadhu-da. He was a short and stout looking man with reddish beard. One look at him and you would know he was perhaps a mountaineer or trekker or at least an adventurer of some sort. He did not need an introduction.
Incidentally later in life I met Sadhu-da at the Book Fair near a stall called Utsa Manush and discovered that he was now a teacher at St Lawrence High School - my alma mater.
It was this Sadhu-da at Susunia Camp from who I first learnt the name of Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler. He said, if you can find it please read a book by Peter Habeler called Everest An Impossible Victory. It is the story of their impossible conquest of Mt Everest without oxygen. In fact they were the first humans to do this on an 8K peak. It was a heroic feat of the extreme nature and much as lot of mountaineers do it these days, they were the first ones who did it going against the conventional wisdom of those days.
In those days the effect of living in an oxygen depleted environment for several days was not known. Particularly the effect on the brain. People speculated that they would probably go blank in their memory, if at all they survive this adventure. So obviously, after their successful competition of the impossible challenge they were hailed as super heroes. And both Messner and Habeler wrote their own books on the adventure. Sadhu-da advised us to read the book by the lesser known Habeler.
Upon return to Calcutta I went to National Library - I was a new member then - and discovered to my utter surprise that the book was available there. I promptly requisitioned for it. National Library had a rule back then. If a book is out of print it is not given out to be taken home for reading. They had several volumes of a very fat encyclopedia of sorts where every book in print was listed out. The library staff would scrupulously check every book in this encyclopedia before deciding on its lendability. If it was not lendable you had to read it in their reading room (on table and chair) and return it at the end of the day. I was just not used to reading in this way, particularly when it came to reading for pleasure. It felt very artificial and forced. I loved reading while lying in bed.
Anyway, I had to accept that I would need to read it in the reading room only.
Another problem with National Library was that if you gave a book for requisition it would take hours for it to arrive. The peons took their own sweet time to bring any book that you wanted. Going against all such odds I finally laid my hands on a copy of this rare book. A large hard bound book with thick expensive paper and lots of real photographs inside. I was awestruck by the handsomeness of Peter Habeler who had a full page coloured picture of himself in the book. Looking very tired and sporting what seemed back then like a denim shirt, he had his sunglasses on and Everest's peak was possibly reflected on it. Most likely this was taken by Messener.
An awestruck me flipped through the thick pages and looked at all the pictures. I am sure my jaws had dropped. After the initial dreaminess cleared I started reading it. Habeler said that he was writing the book because although Messner and he together completed the expedition, if you read the book that Messner wrote after this you would think only he alone went to the top of Everest !!! This is the problem with narcissistic megalomaniacs and Messner is one of the worst examples of that kind. No wonder later in life he started climbing completely alone (he did a few expeditions with his brother but he tragically died in one of the mountain accidents). An extremely competent and accomplished mountaineer that he is, perhaps the best in the world (many give that credit to Hermann Buhl though) he is not a nice man to know. While you could marvel at his achievments, you could never be his friend. He is a celebrity and cultivates that image very meticulously.
I loved Habeler's honesty. He wanted to set the record straight. He did not denigrate Messner in any way in the book but it is also true that after this expedition they never climbed together, though they climbed a lot of peaks together before this as a team. Habeler says he and Messner were never friends off the mountain but they were a very good mountaineering team. This obviously broke after the Everest victory and the book. He says we did not talk much while climbing but I knew exactly where he would put his next step in the mountain and he knew the same about me. When your understanding is so good you need not really communicate with words.
Now, back to the National Library reading room. It used to be on the ground floor hall in the old heritage palace which is possibly not used as a reading room any more. That first evening after finishing a few pages of the book it was time for me to leave for the day. Instead of returning the book at the counter, which would mean another stupid wait of a few hours next day, I hid the book behind other books on a shelf of the reading room. So that the next day I could come and straight away get on with reading the book. There was no system of checking if you returned the book you borrowed at the counter. As long as you were not carrying any book out of the library they were fine with it.
So I hid the book and over the next few days I kept at this game. After a few days for whatever reasons I didn't go the library for a few days or perhaps weeks. Finally when I went I discovered the book was removed from its secret vault. Perhaps some staff discovered it and placed it back in its proper place. By this time I did not feel enough pull to go through the entire tedious process of requisitioning the book and then waiting for it for an eternity.
So I let Peter Habeler's book to rest in peace and left it there. But the book remained in the back of my mind.
After internet arrived in our life (at least fifteen years after this) I started looking for this lost gem if it could be found anywhere. I never saw it. Or perhaps I did somewhere but it was listed at a price that was beyond my capability. Plus add to that the cost and risk of shipping it to India. So I gave up on the idea of ever buying it.
For whatever reason, a few months ago I was looking at old book stores in London (one of my most favourite books is Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross). Then suddenly this book came to my mind and the childhood memories of the young adult flashed through my mind.
I discovered that an old copy is very much available for sale in the UK and all for five British pounds. I asked my good friend Sophie who lives in London if she could procure it for me. She gladly bought it for me almost immediately and also brought it over, carrying it all the way from London. In fact handing it over to me is one of the first things that she did after meeting me in Calcutta.
Funnily enough, while the book lies on the coffee table in my living room I have not read it beyond the first few pages yet. I really want to but right now I want to savour the sweet taste of owning it. Something that the youngster could not some forty years ago.
Just imagine - I am looking for the book in its secret place in the National Library reading room and cannot find it when an old man with a flowing beard comes along and tells me in a metallic voice - the book you are looking for will come to you carried by a German fairy but you have to wait for a little more than 40 years for it. Can you do that?
I wonder what I would have told him.
PS: Please don't embarrass me by requesting to borrow this book. I cannot let it go out of my house. So the answer is NO.
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