Mental Altitude

Begumpet is some 1,600 feet above sea level. It’s a long way off from there to 29,029 feet, the world’s highest peak, Mt Everest. For anyone from Begumpet, where tempe­ratures in the summer can often get toasty at 40 degrees-plus, snow peaks, sub-zero temperatures and frostbites usually don’t even happen in dreams. But Poo­rna Malavath, still fresh into her teens, was perhaps meant for vaulting ambitions. A tribal girl from Tela­ngana, she’s now the youngest girl in the world to scale Everest, at 13 years and 11 months. Sadhanapalli Anand Kumar, her friend from the new state, was a co-star in the enterprise, getting to the top an hour-and-a-half after her.

Now Poorna and Anand, 17, are no city kids going to fancy schools where per­haps mountaineering classes happen at hobby time. Poorna is from the Lambada tribe and grew up in a small village, Pakala, in Nizamabad district. Her parents admitted her to a state government school in Class VI. Anand’s father runs a cycle repair shop in Kaliveru village in Khammam. Kondal Rao sits next to his son and beams, his eyes shining with pride. Anand’s mother Lakshmi, an ang­anwadi wor­ker, says all she ever wanted was for her son to be an achiever. “He’s done so much more, he’s done the country proud,” says Lakshmi, slightly flustered with the liveried staffer hovering over her as he serves her tea in the guesthouse where we are meeting. 

Poorna’s case is no different. Her fat­her Devdas is a subsistence farmer with an acre of land while her mother, also named Lakshmi, still works as a farmhand. But today, the two teens stand out as incr­e­dible role models for an education sys­tem, the Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Residen­tial Schools, that emp­owers poor children and encourages them to excel. The Himalayan quest for Poorna and Anand began with a five-day rock climbing camp in Bhongir, Nalgonda district, in September 2013. It was a climb of 650 feet, which might seem like an anthill next to the Everest but this is where the teens say they gained confidence. “I think I overcame all fear after the camp. I understood terms like balance, control, rappelling...basically every­th­ing about climbing,” says Poorna.

Ice, Ice Poorna and Anand on their visit to New Delhi. (Photograph by Tribhuvan Tiwari)

Anand was thrilled to be among the 20 to be chosen for the next camp at the Himalayan Mountaineering Insti­tute, Darjeeling. Poorna recollects how some of the personnel there scoffed at their trainer, Shekhar Babu, for “bringing in small kids”. “They laughed and asked our instructors if they had brought us to climb the Everest or pose by the mountains for photos,” she reminisces. But by the end of the training, the military men were all queuing up to pose for photos with the children. “It was almost as if they knew we were going to achieve the goal of climbing Everest,” says Anand.

In all, the teens underwent eight months of rigorous training, including a camp at Ladakh. Around November last year, Anand and Poorna climbed the 17,000-foot Mount Renock in the Kanchenjunga range. As part of the schedule, back home in the Rangareddy district, they would run 25 km every day, practise yoga and bhrastika breathing exercises to face the tough weather con­ditions on Everest. On the whole, it was a well-coordinated, well-exe­cuted expedition of 52 days consisting of separate teams for Anand and Poorna. Ana­nd’s team had to wait for Poorna’s to come down from the peak before they proc­eeded to achieve the feat.

Each team consisted of four climbers, seven sherpas, a team leader, one doctor and two cooks. But cooked meals consisting of mutton, chicken (and even biriyani!) could be had only till 6,400 feet, after which it was a menu of instant packaged food. This latter bit was tough for Poorna who threw up several times as the smell nauseated her. “But dry fruits and chocolates saved me,” she beams. For Anand, food was just a means to an end and he says he did not mind the bland stuff much. But he remembers how he broke down once while talking to his trainer over the walkie-talkie. “After a while, every step was excruciatingly difficult,” recalls Anand. Poorna, who weighs just 45 kg, carried about 20 kg of equipment like the others. At 8,300 feet, Poorna saw the body of a sherpa lying in the ice and was shocked. “But the sherpas in our team explained it was a normal occurrence and that we should be brave. It was scary...the bodies don’t dec­ompose in the cold out there,” she says.

The weather was favourable on May 24 and 25, which helped them. “After May 26, there was an avalanche and we were lucky not to get caught,” says Anand. The first call that Anand placed after they got back to base camp was to father Kondal Rao, who promptly burst into tears of joy. “My father is my hero. He never once complained about his work at the cycle shop and always encouraged me to work hard, no matter how big or small the task,” says Anand. Poorna called her trainer Shekhar Babu, then her parents. There were other people too who had to be than­ked, like IAS officer S.R. Shanka­ran, who’s had a big hand in promoting soc­ial welfare schools in the district, and All India Services officer R.S. Praveen Kumar, who first spotted their talent.

Expedition over, it’s been a hectic few weeks for the teens. The children have had meetings with one dignitary after ano­ther—they have met PM Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Telangana CM K. Chand­rasekhara Rao, the list goes  on. (That said, so far official recognition has been a bit slow coming, except for a letter of commendation from the PM’s office.) So what of the future? Anand, who is stu­dying Biology, Physics and Chem­is­try, says he’d love to make it to the Olympics one day in long-distance run­ning. Poorna is excellent at any sport she puts her mind to, says school PT teacher Swapna. “She’s great at every game, kabaddi, shotput, volleyball, badminton. In fact, the idea that she could be a climber came to us when we saw the speed with which Poorna would shimmy up a building or a tree to ret­rieve a ball,” laughs Swapna.

Our time’s almost up and an official whizzes in asking Poorna and Anand to don their blazers and get ready for a visit to a TV studio to participate in the Tel­ugu version of Kaun Banega Crorepati, hosted by actor Nagarjuna. The teenagers sigh and the official remarks tongue-in-cheek, “It’s obvious that after Everest, all this is a bit of a climbdown for them.”