Sudipta Sengupta became a geologist almost by accident. She had decided to study physics after passing her higher secondary exams in 1962. At her interview for admission to Jadavpur University, she was asked what she liked to do most in her free time. “Travel,” she replied. “Then why choose physics?” asked one of the professors. “You should study geology. You will be able to travel a lot during your course and later in your work, too—geologists travel all their life.” Her course in life had been set. She immediately struck off physics and wrote geology in the application form. Thus began her love affair with geology, what she calls “the music of the earth”. She soon found the second love of her life—mountaineering. It came naturally to her, she writes, perhaps because of her childhood practice of running down slopes in Nepal and Kalimpong.
In her new book Breaking Rocks and Barriers, Sengupta describes the adventures she has had as a geologist and mountaineer—from “unexpected encounters with snakes in the Jaduguda mines of Bihar and trekking across a ‘black glacier’ in Norway to being engulfed by a thundercloud in Sweden and being greeted by a flock of penguins in Antarctica”.
Doing what she does is difficult, but doing it as a woman is near impossible. In India, she writes, geology was never a preferred subject of study for girls. When she started her undergraduate course in geology there were only two girls in her class of 25 students. But the struggles, she says, have been worth it, both in geology and mountaineering.
“Since my childhood, I had observed those peaks from a distance and they had seemed so far away, out of reach,” she writes about her first mountaineering experience. “Now I was standing in their midst, taking in their grandeur and feeling so far away from the mundane existence of everyday life. I felt small in front of such greatness. It was the same sort of wonder I feel even now when I look at the clear night sky with its innumerable shining stars.”
The book is narrated simply and conversationally. There is no need for Sengupta to adorn her writing. Her adventures speak for themselves.
Title: Breaking Rocks and Barriers
Author: Sudipta Sengupta
Published by HarperCollins
Price: Rs499
Pages: 272
