Despatches from Death Zone

In hindsight, it all falls into place. Mohan Singh Kohli8217;s many accomplishments, and his status as India8217;s pioneering mountaineer,...

In hindsight, it all falls into place. Mohan Singh Kohli8217;s many accomplishments, and his status as India8217;s pioneering mountaineer, are not surprising. However great the degree of difficulty associated with what he achieved, however improbable the task, Kohli was born and nurtured to carry them out.

Kohli8217;s achievements are well-known; they have been chronicled in 19 other books he8217;s written. What One More Step does is put it all into perspective, complete the jigsaw. Once you know where he8217;s coming from, you see more clearly the road he8217;s travelled.

He was a product of his times, both the good times and the bad times. Bad was Partition. Kohli 8212; born and raised in Haripur, in the North-West Frontier Province 8212; made two crossings during those traumatic days; the first time was in February 1947, when riots reached the front door. The family came to India but thought, after a few months, that they could live in Pakistan. So they returned home in July, only to find themselves in the middle of the carnage.

Back to India they came, and Kohli8217;s account of his journey on one of the 8216;8216;trains of death8217;8217; is not only vivid and gripping but a sign of the man8217;s destiny. Somebody up there liked him.

In India, Kohli joined the Navy and plunged headlong into the 1950s. If surviving the riots enabled him to look death in the eye, living in those heady days surely made him believe that no barrier was too great, no mountain too high. Those were, after all, India8217;s golden years and, regrettably, all too easily forgotten today. Independence meant different things to different people but most every Indian had reason to celebrate. In Nehru India had a true giant as Prime Minister, and he was backed by a Cabinet that inspired awe and respect. The Five-Year plans were kick-starting development, pioneering legislation was building democracy on the ground, the great institutions 8212; the IITs and IIMs 8212; were beginning to produce the makers of today8217;s India. Raj Kapoor could aspire to Nargis.

An Indian could aspire to conquer Everest.Kohli8217;s narration of his mountaineering days is fascinating for the chronicling of his feats and the inherent dangers the latter described in typically offhand, modest manner. For example, spending three nights two without oxygen in the Death Zone at 28,000 feet, almost too scared to sleep in case you don8217;t wake up. And the determination: having to turn back when just 300 feet from the summit because of bad weather, a year8217;s preparation and anticipation rolling down the mountainside.

What made Kohli so successful on the slopes? The answer that rings out through this book is a combination of his simplicity, honesty and team spirit. There are no stars in Death Zone, and Kohli appears the consummate team man. That comes across in the style of his writing, which, shorn of embellishment and adjective, resembles the autobiography of another Punjabi pioneer, Prakash Tandon. That comes across most in the startling fact that Kohli never reached the summit of Everest. When the first Indians scaled the peak, in 1965, Kohli was team leader and so stayed behind.

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He also appears to have shared a deep empathy with the Sherpas, the backbone of any Himalayan expedition. He refers to himself as a Sherpa of sorts; certainly he subscribed in toto to their treatment of the mountains as not just physical entities but as spiritual, almost living beings.

He lived by Mallory8217;s epigram, he did things as they were there to be done

Finally, Kohli succeeded because he lived out George Mallory8217;s famous epigram: he did things because they were there to be done. He was not interested in the possibility of defeat. What mattered to him was the safety of his men and the honour of the country. Kohli8217;s definition of patriotism 8212; doing without hesitation whatever the country asks of you, even planting a nuclear device on your beloved mountain 8212; is relevant today, when national pride means wearing an India shirt to the cricket ground.