Passport-to-Jungfrau:
It was more than Just‘ice’
Given a chance would you stay alone in a place where the temperature is in the negative, the ‘top of Europe’ from where life loses its impudence and the panoramic view transcends the relative boundaries of achievements and failures? H.A. Anil Kumar contemplates as the large white spread at Jungfrau annuls the horizon of time and space
They issued me a passport to travel to the ‘Top of Europe’ by train! The means and the destination, both shared the same name though. Located on the tip of the Swiss Jungfrau Mountains, it was a spot popularized by James Bond and Krish 3 films, among others. The difference was only villains and superheroes lived and visited it in films. Closer at home, the meaningless-interlude, in the form of song-dance sequences in Indian films was constantly being shot there. However no hero revealed a six pack from over there. Once at the top of ‘Top of Europe’ I realized that this ‘meaninglessness’ in Indian popular cinema and the ‘vertigo’ that the bedspread of ice on top of Jungfrau evoked within one’s top (brains) were correlated!
I had not seen ice, forget about being amidst it. The ticket-in-the-form-of-passport was issued to me as a mark of celebrating the 100th year of building the six kilometer railroad inside the mountain to reach the top. The poster of actress Aishwarya Rai greeted me as I got into the only Swiss train whose windows could be operated, while I also noticed certain Mehta or other Bollywood film maker’s name etched on the train! I was seriously following the trail left behind by Superman, Spiderman and Krish. I had undertaken a journey of ‘seeing’ where the ice would delete all my ‘prejudices-of-seeing’ like the compulsive existence of horizon lines, while seeing anything.
The journey was not as simple or comfortable as I presumed it to be. The train was well designed to take too long to cover too short a distance. When this two-liner stopped every now and then, I noticed two things: the three Indian ex-patriots were wearing one tenth of the dress-code necessary to be amidst the ice and the second thing was, the semi-circular windows near each stop would reveal what was awaiting us at the top (of Europe). The landscape was just-ice. The whole earth – through the window – looked like a crumpled sheet of huge paper made up of ice. I would not pretend to know what it felt like to be there, though my eagerness was questioned by the conflict between my capacity for the ice/ frost and my assumption of how it would actually be in reality.
I also realized that my ‘top’ was feeling a bit dizzy due to water imbalance, which is generally called ‘vertigo’. Caused by ice, I renamed it as ‘Icophobia’. Forget about leveling super-spider-krish-men’s capacity to (m)eat ice, the migraine inside me was shooting to its brim, due to the lack of oxygen, as and when we moved closer to the top. Yet, the poster of Rajnikanth in the ‘Bollywood’ hotel and the four-euro masala chai availed, as we emerged out of the top, was reassuring. Those expat-Indians-in-one-tenth-clothes were nowhere to be seen, as we emerged out of the mountain.
We climb Eiffel Tower to see outside it, to see Paris. Leaning tower is to be seen from outside itself. London-Eye reveals the city in a specifically orchestrated manner of visibility. Jungfrau, on the other hand, is like Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ – you travel inside it thinking of the end and when you reach up there you realize that the very train travel route forms the tail of the end, together shaping up in the representation of a sperm. It destroys our notion of the white-cube. Yet, there is more to ‘feel’ than ‘see’. That’s why I was more worried about moving in the ice rather than seeing it. We imagine more of all those covered and camouflaged within the ice than merely see its spread. It somehow reminded me of Greenberg’s definition of Modern Art – you see the surface first and then sense what lies beneath. Some Asian tourists were identifying a seated Buddha at one end of the 360 degree ice-spread. The demand to meet the expectation of imagery is at the heart of a travel.
Jungfrau did not seem like its own self, had I travelled all the way to just watch this mere spread of white-in-white? All through, my movement was orchestrated by what someone had literally carved within the mountain in the form of the railroad, restaurants, rest rooms and the like. I emerged out of it for a while, only to cover a piece of 1/4th of an acre of ice which was inversely proportional to the ‘width’ of my expectation about it. The ropes were well tied up all around beyond the permitted area, lest one should vanish off into the white-heaven forever. Everyone did what everyone else did, as if they were in front of Monalisa. Nobody watches her and the ice, both are treated equally. Everybody turns their back to these two to take photos of ‘us’ with ‘them’!
Accidentally I walked back into the contemporary cave and realized – just like spider-super-krish-men’s adventure – that there was a lift that would lift us up by another six-seven floors. Out of the lift, was the true Jungfrau, its views, its heart and its essence. Ordinary men (and women) become saintly just by having a glimpse of it. Learned people also understand the futility of their preoccupations as well.
Here I was at the top of Europe, though there was only one mountain next to me, slightly above me. What you feel is what you see there because what is visible doesn’t match what one would have thought and imagined about it. For instance, the distance between the two mountains was immeasurable, for there was no human intervention or human-measured-proportions into it. I did not know how there was a crow just below the metallic railings below my feet, at that height. I could not realize how far below were those who were skating on circular-tyre-like easy-go apparatuses. Nor did I realize the width of the glass-tunnel below, through which people were peeping out like ants. ‘Distance’ and ‘familiarity’ were emptied from my very perception. I had never seen my own earth in which I had spent four decades, in the way it was visible in front of me right now. This is perhaps what the Sufis meant when they said you can’t see even when it is visible nor can you see even when you think you are.
The mysteries behind the connection between sadhu-babas and Himalayas became clear to me at Jungfrau. The cold had become a tiny metaphoric object which had literally entered inside me, mainly moving around both my palms and brain. The migraine was unbearable, the hands refused to peep out of the gloves even for a while, to click photographs. The small café, out of which I had emerged, had the appearance of an Astronomic construction that must have attracted the filmmakers to it. The famous Sherlock Holmes, who visited Jungfrau in one of his adventure, was frozen in the form of an ice-sculpture inside the artificially created ice-museum within the mountain. Any amount of success of any kind fails to create warmth in these parts. Hence an immense awareness of one’s physical limits is the reward that a mountaineer achieves, when he succeeds.
What we plan and think is controlled by man-made-interiors and exteriors. They are our work place and homes and everything in-between. At the top of Jungfrau, a sense of deja vu takes over. I had a feel that I was ‘at the edge’ – of everything, ideas, plans, physique, and preoccupation. It was a natural body-mind massage of perceptual excess. Whatever images, stored for a life time, of everybody and everything, refused to be collaged upon the white crumpled screen in front of me. Being on top of Jungfrau was like the immediate aftermath of an accident. All our concentration will be of that moment; and upon our body and the anxiety as to what happens to it in the immediate future. Super heroes, to whom I was playing an alibi, are also bound to such binding ice.
People were either getting excited or bored of getting photographed ‘in’ the ice. They were confused, as it happens in front of an artwork, as to how long should they stay there. The last train to the ground was at 5.30pm. It was mind-boggling to see the staff clearing everyone into the train, because if by chance someone stays back, they would be dead with cold by the time their bodies are recovered the next day morning.
“Given a chance, would you stay in this café (6’ x 10’) overnight, alone?” asked a friend.
“I don’t know. But thanks for suggesting the idea, it’s worth contemplating about it after getting back to the warmth of my home (country)” I said. The noise of the icy mountains, commixed with the wind as well as an unusual silence is a treat to the ears. It rings even more, triggering more and more migraine, since the sound of the ice empties what lies within the ears than fills it. The sound and feel of the cold is its vision. The sound track in the best of the Swiss films, about its mountain-life, is evidence to this.
Think about this: I had my first confrontation with that which evaded me for so long. I saw something that did not match my overall perceptive ability, was in a place which was not my notion of space; and realized the futility attached with achievements. I had suffered Icophobia as well as got insights from the suffering, both for the first time. I had travelled to a place to realize that the route is a part of the destination, which, when reached, would write off any difference between means and ends as futile. Super-spider-krish-men look special – even for kids – because they do hint at such possibilities of Jungfrau. A train-passport to the top-of-nowhere is a right attitude to be! When I reached the ground, I was myself ‘plus’ something more which had ‘deleted’ certain prejudice about an absent confrontation with ever changing nature’s ability. My notion of Jungfrau and the ice changed me in a way that the ‘being amidst’ it shifted the focus off me to that which consumed me, making me a part of it. At least Jungfrau told me so.
