Truthfully speaking, the number of times one gets to read or hear about tribal people in India is about the same number of times you spot a tiger roaming freely in India’s jungles.
It’s not only rare, rather falls in the trajectory of being something strange, perhaps that we aren’t accustomed to hearing much about. So strange has the perspective surrounding tribal lives in India become that you tend to think of them through questions? When was the last time you found news about tribal India and the issues affecting it on the opening page of a leading daily?
Can you name five prominent writers in India who write about tribal culture and its preservation with fervent passion? If this worries you the same way it worries tribal India about its lack of representation- then a rare and special news might bring a smile to your face.
Under an initiative that was taken by the Maharashtra Tribal Department jointly with the Chandrapur Collectorate, a mission known as Shaurya was launched aimed at youngsters to scale the tallest peak in the world- Mount Everest. Interestingly, none of these tribal children had perhaps even heard or a great deal about the Mount Everest, let alone having ever endeavoured to scale it.
Proving that no endeavour is ever hard enough to foster, these four tribal students have made an entire country proud by tasking themselves with an onerous challenge of doing something rare. And the students who successfully undertook the absorbing challenge of scaling Mount Everest were- “Umakant Madavi(19), Parmesh Aale(19) and Manisha Dhurve(18), from Devada ashram school and Kavidas Katmode(18), from Jivati asharam school.
The above students, selected for the mission were completely guided by the auspices of the joint mission and while the two- Kavidas and Umakant reached the top, i.e., the summit at around 3.25 am, the other two- Parmesh and Manisha reached at around 4.25-4.35 am. The task of reaching the top of a summit that is approximately 8,848 meters is not only a physically challenging one but rather a matter of extreme mental rigour.
It’s quite simply remarkable that four avid youngsters from the tribal heartland of the country who hadn’t even thought of endeavouring to do something as remarkable as climbing the Mount Everest not only did that but splashed India’s flag proudly right at the top. And that’s not the only interesting thing surrounding the successful completion of a challenging mission. It is believed, a team of 10 were chosen to participate in the scaling of Mount Everest and the chosen bunch underwent an 18-month long training schedule. And the climb which culminated in the successful accomplishment of the mission actually began from the Chinese side, which makes things even more interesting.
Perhaps, the country needs motivating examples such as these. And these are rare feats that truly mark the potential of the country’s often ignored and unsung chunk that not always makes its presence felt in mainstream depictions in the media. So when are we hearing about another special feat of this kind? Anytime soon?