Bhaskar Sitholey

“But there is nothing wrong with pessimism. The world needs pessimism too. There is a well-known aphorism by G.B. Stern: ‘Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.”
― Angela Kiss, How to be an Alien in England: A Guide to the English

“Before us, rising out of a misty shadow-lake of deepest purple, stood the twin summits of Nanda Devi, exquisitely proportioned and twice girdled by strands of white nimbus. This was backed by a liquid indigo, changing to mauve as it approached the south-west, where the icy pyramid of Trisul stood in ghostly attendance. Then, after passing through every degree of shade and texture, the colour died, leaving the moon to shed her silver light over a scene of ravishing loveliness, and to revive within me childish fancies, too easily forgotten in the materialism of maturer years.”
― Eric Shipton, Nanda Devi

“I was very surprised at the type of country which lay before us. On the true left bank of the glacier the giant cliffs of Nanda Devi rose sheer and forbidding in true Himalayan style; but, bounding the glacier on the right-hand side, beyond a well-defined lateral moraine, an expanse of undulating grassland stretched for miles, in lovely contrast with the desolation of the moraine-covered glacier. If the shepherds of the Dhaoli and Niti valleys could only get their flocks through the grim gorges of the Rishi Ganga, they would find here almost unlimited grazing. Now this pasturage is a sanctuary where thousands of wild animals live unmolested. Long may it remain so!”
― Eric Shipton, Nanda Devi

“But the earth asked ‘Why do you come in the form of mountains and not in your own form?’ and Vishnu answered: ‘The pleasure that exists in mountains is greater than that of animate beings, for they feel no heat, nor cold, nor pain, nor anger, nor fear, nor pleasure. We three gods as mountains will reside in the earth for the benefit of mankind.”
― Eric Shipton, Nanda Devi