Avarachen Everestil*

Most of my dreams are what most people dream. Yeah you got it right! The wet ones! Explicitly stating them here would be a bad Idea. Dreams that can be stated publicly with Shiv Sena approval are rare and far between.

Hence this Everest dream of mine is somewhat of an exception. It doesn’t contain the normal quota of voluptuous babes and kinky wear. Nor does it have white saris and aunties in the rain (It does have a nude Sherpa (female!!!!) though). In fact it is so alien to my usual train of thought that sometimes I wonder if somebody “planted” it there. Anyways what makes it so different is that I am actually trying to fulfill it. Hope I have better luck with this one than with the wet part, believe me, those are really hard to fulfill (as if you didn’t know!).

Let me elaborate the dream a bit. The picture looks something like this when I see it in my head. I am standing on top of Mount Everest. On my right hand I will have the national flag. A Ray-Ban anti-glare glass fits my eyes. Instead of a skull cap, I will have a red towel (chumanna thorthu) wrapped around my head, I have communist tendencies you see, so the color. I will be wearing a Kitex vest and lungi (Sarong). On my left hand I will be holding the poster “Chandrans chayakada” (Chandran’s Tea shop). A beedi (cigarette) hanging from my lips.

The reader is requested to abstain from immaterial queries like “how will you wear a lungi on Everest?”, “are you mad?” etc. To all such frivolous questions my answer is “I am a proud mallu and this is how I dream!”

On my right side stands Mr. Shyam Chand Kalakat, my adorable room mate and compatriot and co-climber clothed in similar fashion. The only difference is that his left hand holds a camera.

The next part of the dream goes something like this. As we climb to the summit, I will ask Shyam to set his foot on the summit first, he refuses and asks me to do the same. We may be low on oxygen, our brain cells may be dying by the millions, but courtesy is courtesy no matter what. After a long session of bickering, we decide to step on it together.

Both of us being expert at double crossing each other, we both try to step first. The result is a small avalanche that covers Nepal/China in ice for the next millennia (Did I forget to mention my sadistic urges??).

To continue with the realistic part of my dream, (stop laughing!!!) our Sherpa (remember he is a she!) now does a belly dance and then we do our Salsa and then… ok, ok, this is getting wet again, let me discontinue!

This is what happens when you try to write out a dream, it looks dis-jointed and as badly edited as any other Bollywood film.

To start from the start, we start from the base camp. There is a low humming wind, visibility is 0 and our lungis are a-flutter. I grip my rope like there is no tomorrow and take one painful step by painful step. The going is slow, the elements against us and Shyam is nowhere to be seen (visibility being what it is). Suddenly I see a flash, it takes my de-oxygenated mind a few minutes to register that it is no lighting flash but that dumb camera freak Shyam taking pictures (you wouldn’t believe the lengths he will go to get a pic!).

I use the choicest of market language to bring the bugger back to his non-existent senses and get back in line. This super human effort would have tired a lesser mortal. But you forget that I am the dreamer cum author cum lead of the story. I take it like a Sunday morning stroll to the church. Suddenly the wind picks up, and we find ourselves in the middle of a howling tornado. The going just got tough but the tough (read me) gets going now. With superhuman effort and raw will power, I manage to trudge along all this while pulling up a sensless Shyam (You want your version? you write your blog!).

All of a sudden, I feel the rope slacken. The wind has dislodged it! A lesser being would have quailed, but me being me, I don’t give up. It is instinct that shows me the path. It is determination that keeps me going. It is hope that keeps me alive but above all it is the thought of the Sherpa which drives me to these superhuman feats! As Mohanlal says, who wouldn’t want a “hot blanket” in these cold conditions? His dialogue, like my blog may be out of taste, but definitely apt for the situ.

Just as we think that the worst has come to pass, along comes an avalanche and all people except the Sherpa, me and Shyam are killed (told you I was sadistic!). After all, when this dream is made into a movie, who will pay for all the extras? All said and done, it is so much better to kill them all off….:)

The trek is now a matter of life and death, but we keep at it with dogged determination. In the end, even Mother Nature accepts defeat and steps down the tempo of her capricious elements. So much so that by the time we reach the summit, we have perfect conditions for photography. My daydream conforms to the “pictures-speak-a-thousand-words” concept so I am not surprised that at the most critical place we have perfect conditions.

Coming back to the nude Sherpa ********** (censored by Shiv Sena VHP and all other keepers of our 5000 year old tradition.)

The end as they say, comes swiftly. So let me skip over the return journey and jump to the publicity. Our names are splashed across all Malayalam news papers (and the odd national ones too), hailed as the first Malayalees to conquer Mount Everest. Malayala Manorama devotes the full first page on us, complete with the route we took and a red heading (36 size font) “Avarachen Everestil”. Meetings with dignitaries, dinners with the elite and inaugurations by the truck load follow. After months of partying, corporations come forward to sponsor us and we spend the rest of our life doing nothing but spending the money**

*To the non-malayalee, the heading means “Abraham on/at Everest”.
**I may be a sadist but I am still a sucker for happy endings.
********** You will find this at desibaba.com.