Sajha.com

Bungee jumping

(RECYCLED piece: This was originally published in The Kathmandu Post, 21 July, 2001. Special thanks to Neeraj, Bhaskar and Salil for sharing the adventures.)


By Ashutosh Tiwari

How would you like to close your eyes and fall headlong from a bridge, stationed at a height of 160 metres . . . into an ice-cold, boulder-filled and ragingly foaming Himalayan river?

If that sounds like a fun way to spend a part of your Saturday afternoon, then welcome to the sport of bungy jumping, available, since early 2000, at a price in this country of mountains long known for, well, heights.

It was late last year when three friends and I, looking for a way to escape Kathmandu to finish up the year on an adventurous note, decided to go bungy jumping. We knew very little about the sport, of course — except that, on and off, we had caught a few bungy visuals on a foreign TV show or two (most memorably in an Aerosmith music video).

The idea that seemingly sane people would climb up to insane heights only to come crashing down to the earth with nothing but elastic cords tied to their body parts was frightening and exciting. We had to explore this fright and the excitement for ourselves.

That we could explore all this not too far from Kathmandu in one afternoon and still be able to make it home by the evening to sleep off the ‘jump-lag’ only added to our thrill.

And so we left, at seven on one chilly December morning, for The Last Resort in Sindhu Palchowk district. From Thamel, our bus, carrying about 20 potential jumpers, wound its way towards the northern directions, through the bazaars of Koteswor, outer Bhakatpur, Dolal Ghat and others.

The final stretch of the Kodari Highway was uneven, thereby rattling the bus sideways and up and down, and giving us all a good workout on our seats. But around midday, the bus did reach — like a caterpillar completing, at last, that lurch towards the end of the leaf it’s chewing on — our destination, within 12 miles of the Nepal-Tibet border.

Getting off the bus to stretch our legs, we soon forgot our hunger upon seeing the wiry mesh of the 166-metre-long suspension bridge atop a yawning gorge. A fast, furious and cruel Bhote Koshi river swirled below. The whole scene came upon us as though it had sprung to life from the Marlon Brando movie Apocalypse Now.

As the sun shone warmly high above, turning the jagged grey peaks of rock yellow on one side of us, and as crisp air from Tibet blew in our faces, all we could do was shudder in silence with nervous anticipation.

The Last Resort folks — two New Zealanders, one Nepali and one Israeli — did their best to make us feel comfortable. After welcoming us with coffee and a light lunch of noodles and potatoes, they gathered us all together, and started rattling off the procedures, before weighing each of us.

It was obvious that these bungy-masters had done the explanations hundreds of times (a la the flight attendant who tells you about those emergency exits just as your plane is about to take off), were thorough in the mastery of their methods, and knew how to have fun helping people throw themselves off the bridge.

Meantime, their good-natured ribbing was enough for some of us to start reconsidering the sheer lunacy of what we had set out to do. After all, think about this: who in a right frame of mind in Nepal would pay a little more than 3000 rupees (that too, at a heavy discount for Nepalis) for the pleasure of diving headlong from the side of a bridge into the yawn of nature?

But happily, as I saw it with my own eyes that day, around 20 or so Nepali and non-Nepali men and women - each with a varying degree of interest in adventure tourism - would really put themselves in that ‘lunatic’ frame of mind to pursue the ultimate adrenaline kick, and, to the best of my knowledge, survive well enough to tell the tale to all who would listen.

Considering that the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island in New York is only 92 metres tall, and that a 25-storey building is about only 76 metres tall, it was no small achievement to have jumped off a height of 160 metres.

So how did the jumpers — forgetting careers, families and everything else - choose to make the plunge? Good psychology certainly helped. Knowing that that the Swiss-tested and New Zealand-managed safety standards would work just fine put all first-timers mentally at ease.

And the suspension bridge, we were reassured, was not going to snap under the weight of our collective excitement. That was because it was designed and constructed with a loading factor of 41,500 kg. Plus, the fact that the bridge functioned as a jump-platform for jumpers, a backstage for the bungy-masters to pull up the pulleys, and a balcony space for onlookers to cheer at his each jump while remaining a short-cut for Tamang villagers to get to the other side of the river in less than three minutes (earlier, they used to trek up and down for five hours) made all feel like they did not want to let it down by not, well, jumping down from it, especially after having come all the way from Kathmandu for bungy-jumping!

And so, with the issue of ‘hardware’ settled safely, it was easy to turn attention to the science behind each jump. Each jump takes about 15 minutes from start to finish, and once your turn comes, the bungy-masters beckon you to the middle of the bridge.

There, they strap you onto a chair that is locked tight against the bridge linings so you can sit but can’t move. And once you are seated, the bungy-masters wrap, with velcro, the y-shaped end of a thick manufactured-in-Malaysia but made-and-knotted-in-Nepal elastic rope onto those parts of your legs, where the ends of your socks hug your calves tight.

Since the rest of that mammoth rope, which looks and feels as if it were one long anaconda, is already down the bridge forming a U-shape under the bridge and over the river, all you do is quiver as you sit alone to feel the unmistakable pull of gravity on your legs and then on your whole body.

Meanwhile, to maintain balance, the bungy-masters drop down a vessel that’s slightly more than your weight, and take great care to keep a pulley-like system in place. Soon, the lock to your chair is open, and you are able to stand and walk about four paces forward onto the foldable iron mat, which juts out from the middle of the bridge. You grab on to the railings that are now behind you, and you take a deep breath as you look sideways, front and down.

Sideways, you see your friends and onlookers cheering you on; up ahead, you see calm, green hills, majestic in their remoteness; and, down below, you see the blue and naked waters of the Bhote Koshi River, and hear their roar amplified all the more by the big boulders.

And then, you open your palms to let go of the railings behind, and think of that Van Halen number as you move forward into the river from a height of 160 metres. Only then, you know that you have jumped . . . from one of the highest bungy-jumping heights on the planet.

As your whole body, respecting Newton’s laws, lurches headlong into the river, the U-shape of the rope quickly morphs into one giant elastic band so that you are soon turned into a yo-yo. As your heart beats like crazy, and blood seems to rush out of your system, and you feel as though you are going to smash yourself into pieces at that boulder below, you suddenly feel a gentle tug, which soon takes you back to the way of the bridge up above.

No uncomfortable jerks. No abrupt pulling and pushing. No spinning out of control, and no swinging wildly from side to side. But a bounce so soft and gentle that you feel as though you have been pulled up to float (yes, float!) all the more on air. Then the gravity pulls you down again, followed again by the upward bounce, and this up and down bounce goes on very gently for less than a minute until you become completely suspended, as it were, in a sort of an orgasmic bliss.

Only then the jump-masters up on the bridge start using the pulley-system to pull up the vessel so that you can be lowered to a sandy patch by the river.

Soon, you are able to wave at your friends below you, and grab hold of a long stick, pushed in your way by one of the Last Resort folks. Once you grab the stick, it’s only a matter of minutes before they help you land, and open up the velcro straps on your legs so that the rope can be pulled up to strap on to the calves of another jumper up on the bridge.

Finally, we Nepalis have long prided ourselves on being citizens of a country of tall mountains. Indeed, mountaineers among us have long appreciated the heights from which they can go around the world. But for those of us who have neither the time nor the inclinations to be a mountaineer, spending an afternoon bungy-jumping from a height may well be one adventure through which we can experience the world within ourselves.

***********

More on bungee jumping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungee_jumping

More on Last Resort bungee in Nepal
http://thelastresort.com.np/bungy.htm

   [ posted by ashu @ 07:00 AM ] | Viewed: 1868 times [ Feedback] (1 Comment)

Nothing fancy . . . just an attempt to provide the SAME platform for these Web links (assuming, of course, these might be of interest to visitors of this blog).

I am NOT a journalist either by training or by profession.

Just happen to be a curious person.

And I ENJOY -- really enjoy -- writing . . . from time to time, about ideas, people, places and events that I come across and find interesting enough to
be SHARED with others who might like similar stuff.

Tetti ho.

*************************************

Links:

1. A conversation with Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and a winner, along with his Bank, of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/360/Interview/13802


2. A conversation with the founder of BRAC, the world's largest NGO which is in Bangladesh.

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/358/Interview/13758


3. Bangladeshis of Nepali ancestries: In their own words

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/359/Nation/13777


4. Telecom lessons for Nepal from Bangladesh?

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/344/StrictlyBusiness/13424


5. A review of a book on Bangladesh's private sector

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/251/Review/399


6. Some good articles written by Nepalis writing in English for the now-defunct The Kathmandu Post Review of Books (1996-2002) can be found if you play with this link.

http://www.asianstudies.emory.edu/sinhas/kprb.html


7. Given my formal and informal association with it, people often ask me about Martin Chautari (MC) -- the ultimate place for no-holds-barred Socratic dialogue in Kathmandu on contemporary issues. I have learnt a lot by going to MC discussions and by interacting with speakers there.

Here's a link that provides a decent introduction to MC.

http://www.sarai.net/journal/pdf/010-015%20(martin).pdf

8. An informal reading list of Nepali sahitya books compiled by writer Khagendra Sangraula a few years ago.

http://www.sajha.com/uploads/Nepali%20Literature%20Reading%20List.pdf

Enjoy,

oohi
ashu

**************************************
"Be who you are . . . because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

   [ posted by ashu @ 02:24 AM ] | Viewed: 1898 times [ Feedback]

Pujan Roka attended St. Xavier’s School before heading to the US for higher studies. An award-winning editorial cartoonist, Roka responded to Ashutosh Tiwari’s questions about his book Bhagavad Gita on Effective Leadership.

An interview

Q. Why Bhagavad Gita for a book on leadership?
A. Management thinkers have long studied spiritual figures such as Jesus and ancient texts such as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in the context of leadership. I see the Gita as one additional contributor to the leadership literature.

Q.What motivated you to write this book?
A. No one had previously explored the Gita in the context of present-day leadership. This gap was my key motivator. During my research, I had an opportunity to exchange notes with Peter Senge and Marshall Goldsmith, two well-known management gurus. Their positive responses motivated me further.

Q. How did you do the research? How long did it take?
A. I did the research mostly by examining what the contemporary authorities say about leadership. It took a little over three years.

Q. What has been the reaction of businesses in general?
A. I have received positive reactions from businesses here in the US. I have given a few presentations based on what I wrote in the book.

Q. What is one essence about leadership that you distill from the Gita?
A. Leadership is about inspiring and guiding others by ideas, actions, and compassion. This is the essence of leadership as taught by the Gita.

Q. If cynics were to accuse you of using an ancient Hindu text to ride the “leadership studies boom” in the US, what would be your response?
A. Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books on leadership. But only a few writers have looked into ancient texts to extract leadership wisdom for contemporary times. In the Gita’s case, prominent management thinkers had not devoted an entire book to it, while scholars of Gita had not put it in the context of leadership, especially extracting lessons for business readers.

My book bridges this gap. A US-born Indian-American manager at a Fortune 100 company told me that he grew up noticing a copy of the Gita in his parents’ puja-kotha. It was not until he read my book that he got curious enough to read the Gita itself.

Q. I have long enjoyed your cartoons on the Net. I am surprised that you chose not to illustrate this book with sketches and drawings.
A. I have heard similar things from others. I’ll keep that in mind for my next project.

Q. Your book is a self-published one. What are your thoughts on self-publication?
A. As you well know, many new and well-established writers are publishing their own books these days in the US. Self-publication as an approach has created a brand new publishing model which gives the control to the writers instead of to the publishers.

In my case, I found no publisher who could represent the genre that is demanded by my book. There are publishers that specialize in either business or spirituality. But there are none that specialize in handling both business and spirituality in a cohesive way. There are some publishers who have started combining Christianity and business. But Eastern religious traditions are very foreign to them.

Given these constraints, self-publishing has worked very well for me. I have a world-wide distribution through major retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and major wholesalers like Ingram. I am not aware whether any Nepali retailer has tapped into this distribution, but the opportunity is there. What’s more, through this approach, I have been able to channel most of the proceeds to Save the Children programs.

Q. In any case, it looks like you are the first Nepali writer of a business/leadership book aimed at an American audience.
A. To the best of my knowledge, that is correct.


****************
A shorter version of this appears at
http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/348/Interview/13515

A review appears at:
http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/348/StrictlyBusiness/13516

Here is the book on Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Effective-Leadership-Timeless/dp/0595370403/ref=sr_1_1/102-7772675-2697722?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178983717&sr=8-1

More at http://www.pujanroka.com

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This Life on Lithium
A review by Ashutosh Tiwari

BOOK:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
by Kay Redfield Jamison
Vintage Books, New York 1996

Doctors enjoy talking about their specialties. What they don't enjoy is talking about their own battles with various afflictions, be they cancer, drug addiction or, God forbid, clinical depression.

Kay Redfield Jamison is a refreshing exception. A tenured professor of psychiatryat the prestigious Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Maryland, USA, she is one of the world's leading experts on manic-depressive illness.

It is the illness she knows all too well personally as well. "As long as I can remember," she writes, "I was
frighteningly beholden to moods . . .[I]ntensely emotional as a child, mercurial as a young girl, first severely depressed as an adolescent, and then unrelentingly caught up in the cycles of manic-depressive illness by
the time" she "started [her] professional life, by becoming, by necessity and intellectual inclination, a student of moods."

As such, this book is Jamison's brutally honest and
poetically charged memoir about how an intelligent, beautiful and cultured woman like herself has lived with two identities that stand in sharp contrast to one another. The first identity is that of a wailing, helpless manic-depressive who, from time to time, completely loses her emotional moorings, only to oscillate wildly
between feelings of giddy grandeur and crushing despair -- leaving relationships, credit ratings, academic performances and much else besides in utter ruins.

And her other identity is that of a stable psychiatrist who does path-breaking research, wins professional plaudits, savors romance with lovers, enjoys the arts and music,
and helps train the next generation of doctors. Against this backdrop, this memoir can best be read as riveting, frightening yet ultimately inspiring stories of Jamison's wars against herself as she continues to wrestle with bouts of manic-depression in an attempt to lead a happy, productive life.

But just what is manic-depressive illness anyway? Quite
simply, it is often described as a severe disorder of moods. It is a disease nonetheless, as Jamison eloquently writes in her quotable intro, that "kills tens of thousands of [women and men] every year: most [of whom] are young, die unnecessarily, and are among the most imaginative and gifted that we as a society have." Yet, "[t]he
major clinical problem in treating manic-depressive illness is not that there are not effective medications - there are -but that patients so often refuse to take them."

Besides, as Jamison puts it, "because of a lack of information, poor medical advice, stigma.
Or fear of personal and professional reprisals, they do not seek treatment at all." The illness "distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful beahaviours, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is biological in origins, yet one feels psychological in the experience of it; an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide."

Jamison's traces the roots of her manic episodes to watching her brilliant, idiosyncratic father periodically fly high and come crashing down on his emotional roller-coaster when she was a child. In college, which was an emotionally traumatic rite of passage to her, she spends more time on research at labs than get good grades. Her research skills get her into graduate school, where, she finds the "freedom from the highly structured existence of undergraduate studies", delves into experimental psychology, and, as a student-researcher, interacts with a variety of patients with mental health problems.

Offered a teaching position upon the completion of the PhD,
she starts a job at a time when her mania hits her with full force. Of that period, she writes, "my marriage was falling apart . . . I was increasingly restless, irritable and I craved excitement: all of a sudden, I found myself rebelling against the very things I most loved about my husband: his kindness, stability, warmth and love. I impulsively reached out for a new life . . . credit cards are disastrous [for manic-depressives], personal
checks worse . . . "

As pieces started to fall out of Jamison's life, it was her
elder brother who, out of love and without judgment, started to settle the dust for her. He paid her bills, bought her the medicine of manic-depressives, Lithium, and basically "spread his wing" over her. Jamison acknowledges that not many manic-depressives are lucky to have such a loving family member, and she credits the support
and care she received from her brother for putting her back on track of doing research. Meantime, she started going to therapies.

And so the memoir goes, in its very readable prose,
detailing intermittent periods of bliss and productivity in
Jamison's life with months of utter despair and madness. In
between, in lucid terms, she talks about the latest research being done in the identification of and in the treatment of manic-depressive patients. She addresses her concerns "about writing [this book] that so explicitly describes my own attacks of mania, depression, and psychosis, as well as my problems acknowledging the need for ongoing medication."

In appearing undeterred by the possible effects of her memoir upon her personal and professional life, she displays much courage, honesty and, interestingly, pure emotional strength. But then, as anyone who, like Jamison, has battled manic-depressive illness for any amount
of time may admit, once you learn to live with manic-depressive illness, there is very little that seems to be of "insurmountable difficulty".

All in all, this is a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading and
learning much from.

**************

Originally published in The Kathmandu Post Review of books (July 1999).

- http://www.asianstudies.emory.edu/sinhas/kprb.html

******************

A recent appearance by Kay Redfield Jamison

- http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518186

The book itself

- http://www.amazon.com/Unquiet-Mind-Memoir-Moods-Madness/dp/0679763309

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Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Revised and updated, 2002
By Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
Published by Rider, London
Page: 303

A book review by Ashutosh Tiwari

(Originally published in Kathmandu's New Business Age magazine in 2004 or so)

If you want to see happiness personified, spend half an hour talking with Baikuntha Manandhar about the joys of running.

Watch Manandhar’s eyes light up, how his face radiates with a smile, and how infectiously enthusiastic he gets when describing his participation in the Montreal (1976) or the LA (1984) Summer Olympics.

You can imagine him—eyes closed, wiping the glistening sweat off his face and enjoying the roar of the crowd as he nears the finishing line. To Manandhar, the only thing better than talking about running is running itself: setting the goals, throwing himself into the activity, investing all his psychic energy into the process, and then enjoying running for its own sake are what that seem to make Manandhar genuinely happy.

Is there a psychology behind Manandhar’s happiness?

All right, before we get further, let’s accept that when one hears the word psychology, one assumes that whatever it is, it’s got to do with not happiness but unhappiness and misery.

But there is something called positive psychology, now gaining grounds in Western academia. It’s about how one can play up one’s strengths to lead a happier, more fulfilling life.

Indeed, in a conversation with edge.org, a site devoted to discussing cutting-edge scientific ideas, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman says that 50 years and 20-billion dollar worth of scientific research by academic psychologists has been able to make “14 major mental illnesses treatable” now—turning many “miserable people less miserable.” Given this remarkable decrease in the “tonnage of suffering in the world”, Seligman sees no reason why academic psychology cannot also help “increase the tonnage of happiness” at workplaces, among family members and in communities.

To be sure, the happiness that Seligman talks is not about “smiling a lot and giggling.” Nor is it about “raw feelings, thrills and orgasms.” Citing Aristotle, Seligman defines happiness as when “one has a good conversation, when one contemplates well...[when one feels] completely at home [with what one is doing]; [when one’s] self-consciousness is blocked...[and when one is in flow] with the music of [life].”

At first brush, such definitions of happiness sound schmaltzy, the kind of stuff associated not with scientists but with poets or hippies. But it also happens to accurately summarise the hard-nosed conclusions of peer-reviewed research conducted over a period of two decades by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (pronunciation: me.high chick.sent.me.high) at the University of Chicago (he’s now at the Claremont Graduate School in California).

In 1990, Csikzentmihalyi published his findings in a paperback called Flow, which so resonated with the public that it went on to be translated into 14 languages. The book’s ideas found applications in fields ranging “from the manufacture of Nissan and Volvo to the design of art museums...from the rehab of juvenile delinquents to the training of business executives.” This 303-page book under review, written in a language that is easy to follow, is a revised and updated 2002 edition.

Based on cross-country, multi-team and multi-year research on happiness, Csikzentmihalyi argues that life’s optimal experiences are based on the state of flow. It’s the state that’s between energy-depleting states of anxiety and boredom. That is to say, most of the time, we are either anxious that we might not meet the challenges of our work or bored because the work we do is not challenging enough. Either case makes us unhappy. The flow approach takes a different path.

It’s “the state in which people”—corporate strategists, dancers, writers, marathon runners, rock musicians, meditation teachers, surgeons, or even the disabled—”are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

A flow experience stretches us just to the point where we are focused to enjoyably meet a challenge and strengthen our skills.

It thus keeps us engaged to the task at hand by steering us clear of states of both anxiety and boredom. In other words, by consciously injecting a dose of purpose into what we do, flow helps us transform even routine activities into enjoyable, therefore happier, experiences—regardless of whether we are working as a teller at a bank, preparing for a meeting with shareholders or selling products to customers.

What’s the relevance of all this to busy Nepali managers? Plenty. Nepali managers worry about keeping workers motivated to finish the tasks at hand. Their understanding of how flow works to raise individual happiness (and correspondingly, productivity) may help them re-configure work in such a way that it induces numerous “flow states” at factories and offices. This way, the managers may start hearing their workers rave about work the way, say, Baikuntha Manandhar gushes about running marathons.

(Originally published in Kathmandu’s The New Business Age Magazine.)

Here's a relevant recent article from TIME magazine;

- http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1606395,00.html

Here's the book itself

- http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0060920432/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-4807608-8082354?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175756180&sr=1-2

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