Does the legacy of Hillary and Tenzing matter today?

Kolkata: On the 70th anniversary of the first-ever ascent to Mount Everest, the above does qualify as a potent query. For millennials and beyond, the definition of heroes has evolved and the non-negotiable adulation of yore is now dangerously judgemental.

The exact height of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet, was measured by Radhanath Sikdar of the Geological Survey of India in 1852. Much later, using myriad sophisticated equipment, the National Geographic Society decided to differ only by 6 feet, such was the brilliance of the 19th-century mathematician. As per typical colonial habit, the peak was named after George Everest, the Surveyor General of India who had commissioned the Great Trigonometric Survey in 1832. Before Hillary and Tenzing, more than ten failed, usually fatal, expeditions had set a fairly sinister context to this exceptional conquest.

Perhaps the most iconic failure was British mountaineer George Mallory, his third and final attempt leading to a loss of life. When quizzed by a reporter about his dogged persistence, after a botched second attempt, he famously replied ‘Because it’s there’. In today’s era obsessed with motivational speakers, this qualifies as a GOAT, no better iconification of human endeavour can possibly exist. Mallory’s body was recovered by an expedition as late as 1999 ( disappeared in 1924) but nobody quite knows whether he and his partner Irvine managed to scale the peak.

Tenzing and Hillary easily qualified as superheroes in the pre-liberalisation age, our wonder decades of the 1970s and the 1980s. In the same league as several other pioneers in the human enterprise - Charles Linbergh the Trans-Atlantic aviator, Roald Amundsen the Polar explorer, Neil Armstrong the moon-struck astronaut and more. Indians also had their national equivalents like Mihir Sen, the first Asian swimmer to do the Dover- Calais English Channel trek and Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian cosmonaut on the Soviet Soyuz T-11 in 1984. Folks as such not just occupied crucial pages of Competition Success Review but truthfully managed to enrapture our emerging imagination.

However, post the 1990s, a definite shift in pattern could be noticed and the reasons were indeed multiple. Quite simplistically, most ‘physical’ or ‘geographical’ milestones had already been achieved and in most cases, replicated expertly by multiple successors. In the 70 years post the first expedition, more than 6000 people have climbed Mt Everest, in around 11,000 odd expeditions. Till 2023, there have been more than 370 spaceflight launches, with representatives from at least 44 countries. The solo and nonstop Trans-Atlantic gig in 1927 contributed to the proliferation of commercial aviation and does not seem like a big deal anymore. Dr Christian Barnaard pioneered the unthinkable heart transplant in 1967, but today more than 3,500 such cases occur annually, with an average life span of 15 years.

When yesterday’s path-breaking innovation becomes today’s assembly-line routine, the reverence for the pioneers is bound to diminish. Especially amongst the younger generations who anyway are brought up on a steady diet of irreverence, as amplified by the start-up culture as well the increasingly influential pop culture. Thus the shelf life of today’s heroes has diminished sharply and this is true for people across endeavours, including sports and business. When folks like Lance Armstrong and tech founders turn rogue, the pitch is queered even further as they are beacons of the prevailing moments.

There is an enormous sense of positive to-do attitude in modern societies, aided amply by technology, affluence and access to opportunities. A prime example, albeit adjacent, is ChatGpt, which inspires pedestrian creators to aspire for undeserving but defensible greatness, such is the power of intuitive replication. Thanks to modern equipment and facilities, climbing mountains and crossing seas are operational endeavours, involving sound strategy and rigorous execution, and no longer fable-worthy bravery or bravado.

While much of space still remains unconquered, the conquests of the day are deeply scientific in nature, as in the demolition of cancer, yet to be achieved, or the taming of Aids. courtesy of the miraculous Antiretroviral therapy. Other notables include global warming, multiplying internet speeds, Generative AI, Fossil Fuel elimination and scalable Organic Farming. In most instances, the perpetrators are large corporations and not the Ronald Ross solo killer of malaria operating from an obscure lab, so we rarely connect a name to a face. Even when that happens, easy replication ensures that a genuine feat is rapidly executable by many others, thus making superlative achievements point-in-time and not timeless.

The legacy of Tenzing and Hillary, like so many cross-functional peers, rests at this fluidity between point-in-time and timeless. What our textbooks and societal narratives made us believe was timeless is increasingly being viewed as point-in-time, remarkable then but routine now. Perhaps, this thinking gives us the confidence to achieve magnificent individual goals, not just as conversational metaphors but as brick-and-mortar milestones. Legacy surely does not deserve this tepid destiny and those entrusted as record-keepers of society, digital or otherwise, must find smarter ways to ensure meaningful continuity. What the Kiwi-Nepali duo achieved on this day in 1953 must remain an abiding inspiration, not something we unkindly and unwisely take for granted.

Perhaps a simplistic starting point will be to rename Mount Everest as Mount Tenzing-Hillary and that would be unquestionably deserving. Legacyness will possibly appear more effortlessly while ‘Everest’ can rest permanently in the annals of fortuitous associations, typically colonial. It would please the soul of Radhanath Sikdar while attracting the fancy of today’s youngsters.