I WANT TO CLIMB THE HILLS!

Tomorrow we will set out once again to the beckoning hills of Makalidurga. A group of 20 students from Shishu Mandir will join 40 VSC basketball students. Two lady volunteers have agreed to provide support for the girls and the junior students. As I prepare for tomorrow's trip - I go back FORTY FIVE YEARS when I was an eleven year old and I climbed my first hills in Kulu and Manali area.

Every holiday from my residential school meant `hill climbing' and my parents often got to see me in home only for 2 or 3 days before I was off for some mountaineering expeditions. WE DARED WHAT OTHERS FEARED. For me hill climbing became my religious yearning and I met GOD everytime I climbed a hill. And the few occasions when either due to exams or due to other reasons I had to cancel a hill climbing programme - it was sheer torture. SNOW CLIMBING with special boots - getting lost - almost being killed by an avalanche - digging a cave in snow which collapsed in the night - WHAT WAS IT THAT I DIDN'T DO.

As I re-live the hill climbing days of my youth when my sons were growing up - the joy they got - the A.S.H.A. that was created specially for other children - more than one hundred camps all over - which were the hillocks which we didn't climb - where are these children now?

I am FIFTY-SIX YEARS and the yearning for climbing Makalidurga alongwith these 60 children is so great that I can't even explain it. IF I CAN PASS ON MY LOVE FOR CLIMBING HILLS TO THESE CHILDREN THE EFFORT WOULD HAVE BEEN WORTH WHILE. As the growing city of Bangalore dynamites these small hillocks for buildings a day will surely come when there will be no more hills for children to climb.

The children of future would clamour `I WANT TO CLIMB THE HILLS'but will any be left!