Human nature

Human nature

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1993 7-8 July-August 27 Human nature (257)

Mount Everest, at 29,028 feet above sea level, is the highest peak in the world. Over a period of 30 years about 10 expeditions had set out to scale it but had failed. Finally, on May 29,1953, two men succeeded in reaching the summit – Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay.

Tenzing Norgay started out in life as a mountain coolie from Nepal After this event, he shot to extraordinary fame, and began to receive invitation from all over the world. He also had the opportunity to meet the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and other world personalities, and was later appointed Director of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling. His biography, published under the title of Man of Everest, was written in English – although Tenzing knew little English – by a western writer, James Ramsey Ullman. (Indian Express, New Delhi, 10 May, 1986).

Tenzing died on May 9, 1986; and Sir Edmund Hilary, who had, incidentally, become the High Commissioner for New Zealand in India, issued an obituary which paid fitting tribute to him. It said, in this obituary, that when Tenzing succeeded in reaching the top of Everest, ‘at the high point of his life, he knelt in the snow, made a little hole and put sweets into it – his gesture to the gods.’

Every man has a strong natural urge to attribute his successes to some superior being, but when he has been left in a state of un-awareness that there is only one true God, he makes his obeisance to gods of his own invention.