I really do not know whether or not hearing impaired people should
venture in the remote Himalayan region that has many dangers in store and
slight error of judgment could prove to be fatal. I do not know of others but
then he did it all and was best at it.
I met him during one of my solitary journeys through the
Nanda Devi Reserve when I was very close to the Base Camp. He never spoke
anything and sounded like an introvert who was engrossed in his own world. It
was not unusual and most people visiting these areas are like that only. Together
we used to sit along and appreciate the mountains, meadows, flowing water,
changing pattern of clouds and enjoy the calm, tranquility, silence.
We spent many days living by our tents pitched in close
proximity. Without his telling me I would have perhaps never realized that he
was hearing impaired. His reasons for coming to the wilderness of Himalaya were
totally different and I could not readily accept those. He claimed that in the
tranquility of Himalayas he could hear the sound of nature; sound of rolling
ice, flowing water and wind. He said that he could feel the vibrations produced
by these movements. So long as physics is concerned everything seemed all
right. There is a source of vibration and the detection of the same depended on
the sensitivity of the receptor. I could however not accept that receptor to be
human body; that too body of a person who was hearing impaired. The only way I
could imagine reception of these vibrations was through our ears. But then I
was not aware of many things.
Slowly, I realized that he really could what I though was
impossible. He could feel these vibrations much before me and many a times to
my sheer surprise he even alerted me of the onset of avalanche in our vicinity.
I call it extra sensory perception and he was really a gifted one. This made me
more and more interested in getting to know how he could do so.
He was Kshitij, my friend who introduced me to an altogether
new world of sound.
--
Dr. Piyoosh Rautela
Executive Director
Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre (DMMC)
(An autonomous institution of the Department of Disaster Management, Government of Uttarakhand)
Uttarakhand Secretariat
4 Subash Road, Dehradun - 248 001
Uttarakhand - 248 001
