Peeks into peaks

A book on the Sherpa community throws light on the arduous and often heroic lives of the mountain climbers.

- POOJA BIRAIA JAISWAL

A journalist once asked Ang Tsering how much he had earned per day on the 1924 Everest expedition, his first. The Sherpa replied, "Twelve annas, that's three-quarters of a rupee." At the time, a rupee could buy 15 kilos of rice. Tsering would otherwise make ten rupees a week as a woodcutter.

Asked why he went to Everest for less money, he replied, with a grin, that the work as a Sherpa was easier.

In their latest book The Sherpa Trail-Stories from Darjeeling and Beyond, authors Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar describe Tsering in a way that could be representative of the Sherpa community of the past: "Always smiling in photos, his crinkly eyes and creased brown-paper skin indicating a life in the sun, hearty kindness scribbled everywhere." The authors, the former a writer and editor of the Himalayan Journal and the latter a writer and illustrator of children's books, recount gripping tales about the life and times of porters. The community that is often relegated to the background as a supporting act finds itself front and centre in the book. It is a compilation of many untold stories, narrated by eminent Sherpa Dorjee Lhatoo and other Darjeeling-based members of the community.

The book is divided into three parts while the first is dedicated to the understanding of the history of mountain porters, the second focuses on Sherpas and their stories.

There is a chapter titled 'Bedrock' about Tenzing Norgay, who made front-page headlines in 1953 as the first man, alongside Edmund Hillary, to ascend Mount Everest. A year later, then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, hoping the school would produce "a thousand Tenzings".