Illustration: Shyam G Menon

The first time I heard of him was when my maternal grandmother decided that she must hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Having read about the great German composer, she wanted to hear his famous composition.

We lived in Thiruvananthapuram, the southernmost city of Kerala, a state in South India. It was a small place, and as state capital, its predominant feel was one of politics. Where in such a town would you locate Beethoven and hear his music in a manner that did justice to its orchestral splendour? My mother’s elder brother then took my grandmother to Madhavan Nair, a relative who hailed from the same native place near Kochi as we did. He owned a fine music system and had diligently assembled over time a good collection of music spanning Indian classical to western classical and much else in between.  My grandmother returned from the visit, a thrilled person. I wasn’t let in on this story. But I figured out that music was involved.

Curious, I asked my father, “ who is Madhavan Nair?’’

His reply was evasive and it was for a valid reason. Around that time, an obsession to hear music and hear it loud and clear, had taken root in me. The financial strain it potentially indicated was clear. We were a very middle class family with a youngster praying for Technics, Pioneer, Denon and now beginning to dangerously say, Nakamichi and NAD. I drooled over product advertisements. Those were the heydays of people from Kerala working in the Middle East. Most people returning on vacation brought a two-in-one, a boom-box. At the airport with boom-box in hand was both hallmark of Gulf-returnee and new found prosperity. For many, it was the sign of prosperity that mattered. I wanted the boom-box for what it actually was. On visits to receive relatives at the city airport I became notorious for missing people and seeing only the two-in-ones being carried home from Gulf countries. Not surprisingly, my father was wary of having me in any place with amplifiers at hand. It was therefore some months before I coaxed him to take me to Madhavan uncle’s house.

Those were the days of the LP record and the audio cassette. I gazed respectfully at his music system, which included a turntable with stroboscope, tape decks with restless needles in brightly lit dials, pre-amp and power-amp, graphic equalizer and deceptive book shelf speakers that could rock a room. The whole thing sat like a living, breathing entity, pensive brain in one place and powerful impact in another, all controlled by impressive knobs adjusted to precision. For me, newly arrived to the world of music with a National Panasonic mono two-in-one  and a couple of tapes of disco music (plus some more periodically borrowed from a supportive neighbour) this was stunning, heavy duty machinery.   

Madhavan Nair (Photo: courtesy his family)

Madhavan uncle was a small, soft spoken person who worked at the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram. Away from work, he was a dedicated collector of music. He was also a good artist. In his free time he drew illustrations for other people’s short stories, published in a regional magazine. Like any music collector, he counted on friends, relatives, contacts and sometimes travellers passing through, to access new albums. On the occasions when he had to make a copy for his private collection, he would create his own cover design for the cassette and note down album details in a crisp, thin handwriting. It was all stored carefully and catalogued. An interaction with the man was a focused experience characterized by insight into music systems and genuine respect for all kinds of music. Slowly my father allowed repeated visits. I began to explore music as a collection of different genres. Back at home the old two-in-one was replaced by a car stereo, which we modified to play indoors. Then, we bought a proper Sonodyne music system, a princely investment those days. On my shelf, cassettes sporting Madhavan uncle’s crisp handwriting gradually grew in number.

As I moved from school to college, my pursuit of music became more serious. I discovered my tastes – classic rock, blues, jazz, country, folk, western classical and Hindustani classical. The occasional conversation with Madhavan uncle went beyond musician and band, to the quality of sound. He would mention about a newly acquired album, play it enthusiastically and we would concur on its elegance with a shake of the head or a short laugh. And then, just as you heard the most wonderful quality of sound, he would softly reprimand a rubber belt or connecting chord for the slightest variation audible to his ears, his ears only. A great relief you felt was the ability to approach music – any music – as such, without fear of being judged. With Madhavan uncle, you could sample Jethro Tull, Keith Jarret, Bach and Ustad Bismillah Khan in one visit without ever weighing one genre against the other. I guess that’s because he was also an audiophile. He may have had his personal preferences. What didn’t qualify for that, he probably approached it as sound that still merited being heard as perfectly as possible. Once in a while, I also met others who wished for good music and had come to know Madhavan uncle as a result. All our paths crossed at his house, which was a regular pilgrimage. The people who gathered around him became many things in life; from joining the regular army of Keralites working abroad to finding a career in custom built audio systems to – this I heard of one person – being an acoustic engineer on tour with a major American rock band. It was a small group of people and if I may say, to merely state an impression I had of them and not to indulge vanity one bit – they were seekers. My grandmother, who in her old age, sought to hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, was also probably one. We just failed to think of her so.

At present with the world getting whatever it wants effortlessly, seeking has increasingly become a lost art and its after-effect on person, a lost human quality. Seeking happened in a context of deprivation. Maybe it still can, as alternative to instant gratification; seeking for the heck of knowing life. Back then, you were plain not getting what you wanted – that was the state of affairs in the 1980s and early 1990s (not to mention – certainly the years before that), when many of the creative and technological offerings of the world reached Thiruvananthapuram through the bureaucracy of India’s protected economy. If you wanted more, you had to innovate and stretch. You requested people going abroad to get some music. News of any such album recently landed spread fast through the grapevine. For obvious reasons, a friend with a twin deck tape recorder was a very valued friend. My generation was born in the late 1960s. Its ear for music came alive in the 1970s. Many journeyed back to visit Elvis and Woodstock. Some ran ahead for a taste of synthesizer music. Seekers were thus an involved lot. And critically, because they had to actively seek, they valued what they found. Seeking made you stretch, the stretch provided journey, the journey was an education. People like Madhavan uncle, represented that trait. He was among early customers of the now familiar configuration of speakers – two satellite units and a separate base unit; he was also among early birds in town to upgrade that to Bose speakers. I remember the excitement this transition generated.      

The cassettes, the handwriting (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Several non-music factors also supported the seeking mentality. Around the late 1980s, if I remember right, both the local engineering and medical colleges made it to the last stages of Siddharth Basu’s iconic quiz competition on national television. While the music-crazy were anyway searching deep to know and access bands, this new found legitimacy by TV to being bizarrely informed provided value to maintaining a wider world view. It broad based the curiosity to know.  A reasonably interested college student bothered to be aware of musicians and actors not just from the state but also elsewhere. At the very least he / she tried. Looking back I sometimes feel amazed at what all my music loving friends in Thiruvananthapuram dug up – Buffalo Springfield, Travelling Wilburys, The Yardbirds, Grateful Dead, Traffic, Spencer Davis Group, Cream, Wishbone Ash, Emerson Lake & Palmer; these were besides usual suspects Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Def Leppard, Jethro Tull, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Queen, Rolling Stones, Beatles and so many others. You lived in a small town. But you knew that something much bigger lived outside. Later, some of these efforts would seem the first dots joined of small miraculous journeys to come.

Once, at PAICO, one of only two or three shops in Thiruvananthapuram that sold rock music in my college days, I was sufficiently intrigued by the art work on a cassette cover to buy the album of an artiste I knew nothing of. I think the album was,`The Extremist.’ It was fantastic to hear. The album travelled around in my small circle of friends. At the local YMCA, I recall discussing Joe Satriani’s style with Ramesh, a wonderful creative person who was then a student of psychology. Over two decades later, I would hear Satriani play in Mumbai and meet him to collect his autograph. Other friends, seriously into music and more knowledgeable than me on the subject, would similarly wait in queue to hear a host of artistes from Ian Anderson to Roger Waters and Mark Knopfler, perform in India. Many of these pilgrims knew Madhavan uncle for the collection he built up, the effort he put into cataloguing it, the equipment he invested in to hear it well and his down to earth attitude despite it all. I may still have albums that he copied and gave me. But the gift went beyond album to empathy for music. Anybody can secure albums. Very few pass on an interest in music by personal example. He did.       

Sometime in the 1990s, Thiruvananthapuram stopped looking beyond its shores. The satellite television age was kicking in and with it, a strident patronage of vernacular tastes to gain eyeballs. Regional channels aggressively promoted local programming. This was expected. But it changed the texture of life for seekers. Where there was no television till the 1980s, you now had a basket of channels. It meant world at your doorstep discounting that much the need to seek. It also prompted the rise of a popular self wrapped local culture. As these changes occurred, foreign music’s cassettes were giving way to imported CDs that were expensive. It gradually eroded shelf space for foreign music. Soon I was running into film songs, parody songs and loads of religious music on shop racks in the city. I wondered if greying society and the remittance economy becoming Kerala’s overwhelming reality with its accompanying baggage of incomplete households had anything to do with the trends. Or was it the effect of big media engineering a navel gazing market of the people at hand? Kerala felt strange – gold, weddings, ethnicity, fervent prayers to God, rituals and a peculiar conservatism. An era of curiosity was drawing to a close.

Madhavan Nair (Image: courtesy his family)

My last meeting with Madhavan uncle was special. I introduced him to a couple of blues musicians that he hadn’t come across before. It was the first time I could give something back for all the music he had brought to my life. Blues particularly, was something he introduced me to. Thanks to heavy duty marketing, the Madonnas and Michael Jacksons of the world get everywhere. But something off the mainstream, like blues? And that too, not just Muddy Waters, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton but others like Robert Cray, Tinsley Ellis, Son Seals, Elvin Bishop, Luther Allison, Otis Rush and so on. Had it not been for music collectors like Madhavan uncle all this would have been difficult to access in Thiruvananthapuram. But it didn’t take long for him to turn trifle philosophical and question the relevance in having a wide taste in music when all around insularity had become virtuous. Room was shrinking for those who appreciated the wider world. I remember him saying that despondently, the last time I met him. Sometime in 2007, I toyed with the idea of calling him up on the phone. It inexplicably persisted in my head till I finally told myself that I will meet him when I went home from Mumbai, where I worked and lived. I didn’t do that early enough.

One day, I got a call from home – he was no more. In all those years that I knew him, I never asked Madhavan uncle how he began collecting music. I only know how knowing him, changed world by music for those like me. And, I also remember those times.

In my life, I have met several people cast as seekers in several subjects. In music, some intimidated me by their ability to reel off statistics about bands and their history, some intimidated by their vast collection of music measured by external hard disk-space, some intimidated by the concerts they attended overseas, for some it was what device you heard music on – was it latest iPod or some other gadget? Much of this seemed music as armour; another one of the weapons stockpiled for self importance and distinction in life. Very few people lived the simple delight in hearing wonderful music of any type reproduced well by a decent music system – which was what Madhavan Nair seemed all about. Meeting him in his living room said all that has to be told. The music system would be playing something softly, yet so clearly that it felt like gentle rain. Madhavan uncle would be dressed in simple clothes – usually the white dhoti of the Keralite householder worn with a shirt or T-shirt. I would inquire of new additions to his music library. The brief conversation about music – including on genres originating overseas – was always in Malayalam, the local language. He had all the stuff that people stocked in their armoury of music with none of the airs.   

I miss that age of seeking gone by.     

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.)    

“To some the Himalaya may be only a name vaguely associated perhaps with a mountain called Everest: to geologists they provide a vast field for the starting and running of new hares; to other learned men, glaciologists, ethnologists, or geographers, the Himalaya are a fruitful source of debate in which there is no common ground, not even the pronunciation of the name; while to the mountaineer they furnish fresh evidence, if such were needed, of the wise dispensation of a bountiful Providence. For lo, when the Alps are becoming too crowded, not only with human beings but with huts, the Himalaya offer themselves to the more fanatical devotee – a range of fifteen hundred miles long, containing many hundreds of peaks, nearly all unclimbed and all of them so much higher than the Alps that a new factor of altitude has to be added to the usual sum of difficulties to be overcome; and withal to be approached through country of great loveliness, inhabited by peoples who are always interesting and sometimes charming. Here seemingly is a whole new world to conquer, but it is a world which man with his usual perversity, flying in the face of Providence, has reduced to comparatively small dimensions: for what with political boundaries, restrictions and jealousies, the accessible area is less than one-third of the whole. And though European travellers and climbers may grouse about this state of affairs, Europeans are, I suppose, largely to blame. For with the present state of the outside world before their eyes the rulers of Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan can scarcely be blamed, and might well be praised, for wishing their own people to have as little as possible to do with ourselves.’’

The paragraph struck home for two reasons.

First was the nature of perspective, different from that of the typical climber and describable as only that of a seeker – maybe, explorer? Second, the paradigm the Himalaya was trapped in. It remains unchanged today. Likely writing between the great wars of the twentieth century H.W. Tilman points to a state of the world that the kingdoms of Asia couldn’t be blamed for wishing to keep away from; limited access to the Himalaya and the Alps getting crowded. This picture hasn’t changed much although the actors therein and the direction of trading blame, probably have. Compared to today’s crowded South Asia and the as populous-China, between which lay sandwiched the Himalaya, Tilman’s reference to the “ crowded’’ Alps would seem lost. June 2013; the scale of human presence in the Indian Himalaya was betrayed when thousands of pilgrims died following heavy rains in Uttarakhand. We live in an era of exploded human numbers. Not to mention, the Himalaya as strategic boundary.  

When Tilman climbed Nanda Devi and found reason to write an account – mentioning therein of limited access to the Himalaya – the Great Game played out between the British and Russian empires, was well past its peak. Despite the passage of time, political games similar to the Great Game, featuring a new set of players, continue to be waged around the Himalaya leaving swathes of it still subject to the stuff of military strategy, territorial dispute, mutual suspicion and a regime of bureaucratic permits.  Not a day passes without disquieting news reports from India’s mountainous borders with Pakistan and China. While the whole thing may be a legacy of erstwhile management by foreign powers, not to mention the legacy of cocooned kingdoms in remoteness, it is a moot question what new generations and governments have done since to enhance peaceful coexistence and enjoyable access across the Himalaya.

That may seem childish.

If so, the thoughts evoked by the image of Earth Rise must be the most childish of all.

Tilman’s book (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Harish Kapadia, India’s best known explorer of the Himalaya and author of many books on the subject calls Tilman his favourite explorer of these ranges. He sent in a brief synopsis on the man, written with inputs from Rajesh Gadgil, Honorary Editor of the Himalayan Journal:

“ Harold William Tilman a.k.a. Bill Tilman, was one of the most prolific adventure writers and great explorers of the Himalaya and Karakoram, of the twentieth century. Originally a tea-planter in Kenya, he began his climbing in the company of another great explorer, Eric Shipton and climbed many peaks in Africa. Their partnership proved so successful that today they are remembered together as ‘Shipton-Tilman’.  Well known for his taciturn nature and simple but sound organization in the mountains (he used to say that any worthwhile expedition can be planned on the back of a post-card), Tilman achieved many firsts during his career. In 1934, with Shipton, he was the first to penetrate the Rishi Ganga gorge to find a way to the heart of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. As if they were still not satisfied by one venture, the pair turned their attention to another challenge and by following an ancient myth, they were successful in connecting Badrinath with Kedarnath by a direct route via Panpatia Bamak for the first time in known history.  They barely survived, fighting for food with bears! After a great physical survival story he wrote, ‘we were experiencing a tiredness which only a very fit body can experience’! Subsequently Tilman joined and then led expeditions to Everest but his heart was in small scale exploratory trips to the then unknown mountains and valleys. Many exploratory episodes followed. In 1936, he led the first ascent of Nanda Devi in collaboration with the Americans and after reaching the summit, he describes that they were so overwhelmed by the beauty around that, ` I believe we so far forgot ourselves as to shake hands on it.’ Nanda Devi remained the highest summit attained by man till 1950. And humility was his trait too – he said that he was sorry to find the head of the proud goddess now trampled.

In the same year, he trekked and explored the areas around the Zemu Gap in Sikkim, of which he subsequently completed the first successful traverse in 1938. In 1937, with Shipton, he made a detailed reconnaissance of the little known areas of Karakoram, notably recorded in Blank on the Map. In the following year, Bill explored the Assam Himalaya around Gorichen but could not reach the mountain’s summit. In later years he explored and climbed extensively in the Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Xinjiang. Some of his notable attempts were Rakaposhi, Muztagh Ata, Bogda Feng and Chakragil. He also led an expedition to explore Langtang, Jugal and Ganesh Himal in Nepal. In that expedition Tilman was the first to ascent Paldor (5896m) and found the pass named after him beyond Gangchempo. In 1950, he led the British expedition to Annapurna where they could reach very near the summit of Annapurna IV. In the same year, he was one of the first persons to explore the Southern approaches to Mt Everest.

He has a place as a great explorer in history and his books narrate his exploits with wit. He kept exploring as his philosophy was – appetite grows with what it feeds upon, not by waiting…!”

It was Kutts Bommanda, then proctoring a fall season-semester course at the India branch of the US headquartered-National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), who told me of Tilman in the library and the reading it held. I was doing my internship then at NOLS India, Ranikhet. The book in the library was a compilation – `The Seven Mountain-Travel Books,’ published by Baton Wicks and The Mountaineers. Rather aptly for Tilman’s work, this section of NOLS India’s modest library was at the deep end of the equipment issue room stacked with mountaineering boots, ice axes, ropes, crampons and compasses. The chapter on Nanda Devi, I reckon, should be interesting for any NOLS student as also anyone who drove up to Ranikhet from the Kathgodam railway station because it talked about the mountain widely recognized as Kumaon’s presiding deity. It also provided a glimpse of the Ranikhet of many years ago for Tilman’s expedition to the mountain had passed through the town.

“ Ranikhet, whither we were now bound, is a hill station in the United Provinces. From Kathgodam, thirty six hours’ journey by train from Calcutta, it is reached by a good road of fifty miles. Numerous buses ply on this fifty mile stretch of road and competition is so fierce that the fare is only three shillings, luggage included.’’ Further, “ Ranikhet is 6000ft above sea level and the relief on reaching it and breathing the pine-scented air, after a journey by rail through the sweltering plains, has to be felt to be believed.’’ Tilman noted that the relief “ is intensified by the sight of over a hundred and more miles of snow peaks; distant, it is true, but near enough to stagger by their height and fascinate by their purity.’’ Beholding this scene today from the road above the town’s market, you get the same feeling.

Among the peaks you see from Ranikhet is the 7816m-high Nanda Devi. Dwell on this mountain scenery awhile; you would agree with the observations recorded in the book on the view from far. Nanda Devi was and still remains, a tough peak to ascend, including the approach to the mountain, which took years for mountaineers to find. Some expeditions had as their highpoint, merely eliciting further progress on the approach while the mountain beyond stayed untrammelled. It was unexplored terrain. In fact, a major change since Tilman’s days is that following complaints of environmental damage by successive mountaineering expeditions and growing appreciation for the fragile ecology of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, the mountain was closed to climbing expeditions.

The onward road Tilman’s expedition took from Ranikhet, was via ` Garul,’ likely modern day Garud; from there to Gwaldam, then over the Kuari Pass to Joshimath and eventually the village of Lata.

Nanda Devi, as seen from Ranikhet (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

About the mountain’s summit, gained several weeks later, Tilman wrote:

“ The summit is not the exiguous and precarious spot that usually graces the top of so many Himalayan peaks, but a solid snow ridge nearly two hundred yards long and twenty yards broad. It is seldom that conditions on top of a high peak allow the climber the time or the opportunity to savour the immediate fruits of victory. Too often, when having first carefully probed the snow to make sure he is not standing on a cornice, the climber straightens up preparatory to savouring the situation to the full, he is met by a perishing wind and the interesting view of a cloud at close quarters, and with a muttered imprecation turns in his tracks and begins the descent. Far otherwise was now. There were no cornices to worry about and room to unrope and walk about. The air was still, the sun shone, and the view was good if not so extensive as we had hoped. Odell had brought a thermometer and no doubt sighed for the hypsometer. From it we found that the air temperature was 20 degrees F, but in the absence of wind we could bask gratefully in the friendly rays of our late enemy the sun. It was difficult to realise that we were actually standing on the same peak which we had viewed two months ago from Ranikhet, and which had then appeared incredibly remote and inaccessible and it gave us a curious feeling of exaltation to know that we were above every peak within hundreds of miles on either hand.’’

After gaining the summit, the expedition crossed over to Martoli near Milam and reached Kapkote via Tejam.

Tilman’s remarks on Bageshwar probably reflected the times.

“ Bageshwar is not the prosperous market town that it once was when its traders acted as middlemen between the Bhotias and the plainsmen. Now the Bhotias deal directly with the banias of Haldwani, Tanakpur and Ramnagar at the foot of the hills. The bazaar consists of solid well-built houses with shops on the ground floor, but it was sad to see so many of these shut up.’’

Anyone visiting today’s Bageshwar would find this surprising for the town is clearly the biggest commercial settlement between Almora and Pindari or Milam. One reason for this change could be the cessation of the old Indo-Tibet trade along the high passes of the Kumaun Himalaya, which dimmed the stature of mountain settlements like Munsiyari and made bigger, the names of towns closer to the bustling plains.    

My affection for Tilman’s world stems from the fact that increasingly I dislike competition. It is not that his generation didn’t compete. They did. What else was the race to the North Pole, the South Pole and that Third Pole – Everest – all about? Tilman himself uses words like `victory.’ But I live enduring its legacy multiplied by population and market. In a million ways, thanks to our rising tide of people and the need to survive, practically everything around has got tainted by the competitive spirit. This is the day and time of the branded warrior when the quest is to somehow brand one’s individual life for visibility in the crowd. Even harmless day to day conversation betrays the words, defences and posturing of competition. Years ago, learning about Darwin’s theory – survival of the fittest – was engaging inquiry about world. Now quoted by every Tom, Dick and Harry in and out of context, you switch off the moment somebody mentions it and its grandfather – competition. It is a widespread schizophrenia. Tilman’s ilk, what you call explorers, could walk in the Himalaya doing just that – exploring. They may have sought personal embellishment. But the grandeur of the Himalaya and its vastness was intact, for human beings were fewer than today. The media, which magnifies human life, prioritises it by achievement and implants it in our brain, was also far less. Achievement wasn’t yet an industry. With that, life was probably still life and nature ruled larger than human life. Compulsive competition has since killed fascination save of course, fascination for the self and promoting the self.

Seeking refuge in bygone eras is escaping the harsh present for what one assumes was a less harsh past.

I admit it.

I was hiding in that library.

I find it liberating to read about exploration in the early age of conquest and not conquest in times of exploration lost.

Photographing Tilman’s book in the gear issue room, I had to conclude that my efforts were a pathetic compromise. This book deserved to be on snow, ideally on that high ridge above the Kafni stream and near the peak of Salgwar (that’s a ridge providing good memories of friends and NOLS courses I have been out with), from where on a clear day, alongside other Himalayan giants, two sheer rock faces crowned by snow and joined by a knife edge ridge, can be seen over the tops of lesser mountains. That’s Nanda Devi and I clearly remember how that sight from the high ridge, one early morning, had emerged the most memorable experience for at least one NOLS student from the spring 2012 Himalayan Backpacking course. Snow on the ground, Nanda Devi in the backdrop – that would have been perfect for Tilman’s book.

But I was in Ranikhet.

The snow was yet far. 

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. This article was originally written when he was the fall season intern at NOLS India in 2012. It was published on the NOLS India Facebook Page. It has since been rewritten for this blog.)