I woke to darkness in a strange room. Consciousness returned slowly and fitfully. The present and the past mixed together in an unreal kaleidoscope. I dreamt of Gulmarg in Kashmir and its snowy mountain slopes where I skied and laughed the hours away. Then the summit of Mount Everest which I scaled a few months earlier. Was it only a few months ago? It seemed an age away. The scene changed quickly yet again, to my detachment in some lonely picket where I was briefing my boys for a night patrol or ambush. Then I saw myself in a jeep, bumping down a lonely, endless road swallowed by darkness and distance.

Always there would be the darkness and the mist, like coils of smoke in a room, and they would blot out the scene, leaving only a deep, meaningless void. When finally the mists cleared and I opened my eyes on 15 October 1965 – that was the date as I discovered later – there were three people at my bedside. There was my mother who was in tears, HC Sarin who was closely connected with the Everest expedition and Narinder Kumar who had been the deputy leader of the expedition.

I was puzzled to see my mother crying. Not yet aware of my own serious condition, I wondered if there had been some tragedy in the family. Sarin, his chin cupped in his palm was looking at me thoughtfully. I could not understand why he did not speak to me. When I tried to speak to them, I found that I could not utter a word. I then tried to signal to them but discovered I could not lift my right arm. Terribly frustrated and not knowing how to communicate with my mother and friends, I closed my eyes to black out everything around me and to give myself time to think.

When I reopened my eyes a few minutes later, my visitors had gone but a nurse stood above me. Soon I realised that there was a tube fastened to my nose and that the nurse was pouring a liquid into it with a syringe. I could feel the liquid pouring through my nose into my throat, and as I swallowed it I had a feeling of renewed energy. But I could not understand why I was being fed in this novel fashion.

A full awareness of the situation slowly dawned on me. The nurse had left but another group of friends and relatives were in the room. I dimly recognised them but could not recall everyone’s name or relationship with me. I did recognise my two sisters and my fiancée who was wearing a white sari and sobbing quietly. I had a strong desire to hold my fiancée’s hands but all I could do was to nod my head in a vain attempt to reassure her that I was all right. More visitors now came into my room. They talked to one another in whispers. Now and then some people would ask me how I felt. This was rather a pointless question since I could not reply.

During the night I attempted once more to recall what had happened to me. The events of the last few months when I had climbed the Everest were still clear in my memory. I could see the faces of the friends who had climbed with me and I vividly recalled the view from the summit of Everest and the sense of exhilaration and achievement which filled them. But nothing more recent came to my mind. It was only during the long and lonely days of slow and painful recovery which followed that I was able to recall what had happened to me since that fateful evening of 30 September 1965, when I had stood on that dark road in Kashmir.

The Indo-Pakistan was had just ended and a cease-fire had been declared. I was on the battlefront in the Sonamarg area with other officers. Captain Jal Master from the Parachute Regiment was the first face that flashed before me in those drowsy days. He had a very pleasant personality. Although I came to know him only when I joined the school, his cheerful disposition was always a welcome diversion in those gloomy days.

Major Surat Singh, Captain Jal Master and I were returning to our base late one afternoon. Suddenly there was the crack of a bullet and I fell down. As I discovered later, the bullet had hit me in the neck. Following my collapse, I was put on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to the Base Hospital in Srinagar. I recalled that the journey to Srinagar was a nightmare. Dr Roy, Major Vasudev and my batman, Sher Singh, rode with me in the ambulance. I kept lapsing into unconsciousness from time to time, and, whenever I was conscious, I felt my body burning with fever and a great thirst. I shouted in Punjabi, ‘Pani! Pani!’ (water) and Dr Roy or Sher Singh would dip a piece of cotton-wool into water and press it into my mouth. During the bumpy ride in the ambulance and in my semi-conscious state, I would also occasionally shout a warning against enemy infiltrators into the area.

During the five-hour journey to Srinagar I had lost an immense amount of blood. Dr Roy and Major Vasudev said later it was a miracle that I survived. When I regained consciousness in the Srinagar hospital, blood and glucose were being pumped into my veins. I was breathing hard and the bed rocked to and fro with my laboured breathing. Among my visitors was an aunt of mine who produced a picture of Guru Nanak which she placed under my pillow. ‘The Guru will look after you,’ she said, as she burst into tears. At this time I may have been able to speak a little but the effort was painful and the doctor warned me not to speak. I was in the Srinagar hospital for two days although it seemed to me at the time that I had been there for only a few hours.

Among my other visitors was Narinder Kumar who brought a friend of his to see me. The friend said he had been very sorry to hear about my accident and asked Kumar if my faculty of speech had been restored. This irritated me and wishing to avoid further questions I merely smiled and kept quiet. When Kumar said that I could speak, the friend enquired if my brain was damaged. This annoyed me even more and I felt inclined to ask the inquisitive gentleman if he had any mathematical problem for me to solve. It has always seemed to me that to bestow sympathy and pity indiscriminately on those who do not want it does more harm rather than good. Such sentimental platitudes carry very little sincerity or conviction and are often counter-productive.

In contrast, there was my batman, Sher Singh. He is not educated and I expected him to utter the usual trite phrases of sympathy. But he did nothing of the kind. ‘You have not lost anything,’ he told me. ‘A Sikh is alive even after his head has been cut off.’ He narrated to me the story of Baba Deep Singh, one of our Gurus, whose head was cut off during a battle. Undeterred, he took his severed head in one hand and fought on with the other. He won the battle and returned to Amritsar where he fell at last in the Golden Temple. This story left an indelible impression on my mind and provided inspiration in the difficult days that lay ahead.

[Niyogi Books has given Fair Observer permission to publish this excerpt from Higher Than Everest: Memoirs of A Mountaineer, H. P. S. Ahluwalia, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.