My Science School

• One of the youngest mountaineers to climb Mount Everest.


• A black belt in karate.


• A former member of the Territorial Army Reservist for the Special Air Service.


• And, an acclaimed television anchor.

That’s Bear Grylls for you. The adventurist, who hosts the popular television series Man vs Wild possesses an impressive curriculum vitae – dare-devilish and courageous!

But before we get going, here’s one disclaimer – his actual name is Edward Michael Grylls. When he was just one week old, his elder sister named him ‘Bear’, which over the years became a household name.

A dream called Mount Everest

Hailing from a cricketing family – his great grandfather, James-Augustus Ford and grandfather Neville Ford were first-class cricketers – Grylls was interested in sports right from his childhood. And that eventually kindled his interest in the world of adventure.

When he was eight-years old, his father had given him a poster of the mountain for his bedroom wall and ever since, he wanted to climb it someday. But it was not an easy task.

While studying at the Eton College, London, the U.K., he founded a mountaineering club, and at 23, he climbed the Mount Everest, becoming one of the youngest mountaineers to do so. Pursuing a childhood dream, Grylls battled the odds to reach the peak just 18 months after breaking three vertebrae in a parachuting accident.

This, by his own admission, was a life-changing experience.

To ensure that he was acclimatised to the higher altitudes in the Himalayas, Grylls climbed the Ama Dablam – peak once described by Sir Edmund Hillary as ‘unclimbable’ in 1997.

That was the beginning of his adventures.

Air, there, everywhere

There are many folds to Grylls’ story. If scaling mountains is one aspect, traversing the globe is another. He led a team to circumnavigate the British Isles on jet skis in 2000. It took him around 30 days, but he did it to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNU). In 2003, when Grylls set sail for the North Atlantic in an inflatable boat, along with three other crew, not many thought he would be able to complete the journey. But in three weeks time, the team completed 3,500 miles to achieve the incredible feat.

The journeys have never been easy, but with passion and fearlessness, Grylls has made them look like child’s play.

Following his favourite line – remember, courage and kindness and never give up – Grylls embarked on a record-setting para-jet para-motor expedition in the Himalayas near Mount Everest in 2007. This not only helped him attain great heights in his career, but also set the tone for his Guinness Book of World Records feat. Along with the double amputee, Al Hodgson and Freddy MacDonald, Grylls undertook the longest continuous indoor freeball. The previous record was 1 hour 36 minutes by a U.S. team, but Grylls and his men, surpassed the record by a few seconds.

Grylls says that the journeys to the Amazon, the Sahara and the Arctic have been hair-rising moments for him. And these are the memories that keep him going…

Alps, here we come!

So it doesn’t come as a surprise that Gyrlls’ idea of a perfect holiday is skiing and paragliding trips to the Alps. For someone who hops around the steepest of the mountains, paragliding in the Alps does look like an easy affair. After all, it’s the call of the wild that beckons him.

Lights, camera, action…

At 45, Grylls has written quite a few books chronicling his adventures. But he became a household name with his television series, Man vs Wild. The series featured him dropping into forbidding places, showing viewers how to survive. While it became immensely popular across the globe, Grylls travelled to India last year to shoot an episode with Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The two spent days at the Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand and the episode was aired in more than 180 countries. Recently, he also shot with superstar Rajinikanth, at the Bandipur National Park in Karnataka. Grylls’ heroics have earned him a huge fan base in India.

Grylls’ adventures have helped him fulfill his childhood dreams. But Grylls is always on the lookout for his next adventure!

 

Picture Credit : Google

This author with a particularly unique name – Pika Nani – says that her childhood dream of becoming a writer was forgotten when she stepped into the world of higher education and went on to study Psychology. But writing beckoned her once more after her daughter was born. “She really became my inspiration,” says Pika, who was born in Bengaluru and brought up in Mumbai. “When I was a kid, as young as four or five, I used to write small poems. My father was my first inspiration as he would write poems and plays in Kannada. I remember I wrote my first short story in front of the class.” Pika loved to read, Enid Blytons mostly, and along the way, many authors such as R.K. Narayan, O. Henry, Jane Austen, Agatha Conan Doyle have also inspired her.

Writing like Pika Nani

Pika feels that being a good listener and observer is the key to good, emphatic writing and realistic characterization. Here are some tips from her armoury!

• First, even before you begin writing, learn to observe your surroundings and people. Be a good listener, develop empathy. This will help you create realistic characters and settings.


• Ideas for a book can come from anywhere, even when you are on vacation, so always stay ready to jot them down. A good way to get ideas is to ask the question “What if? Like, in my case, a question popped up – ‘What if Sherlock Holmes was a teenage detective from Mumbai?’ It led to my Shrilok Homeless books!


• Start by setting small goals such as writing a diary or short stories. Contribute your writings to the school magazine or blogs. This will give you the confidence to write a book.


• Before you start writing your book, prepare a cover page. Write the title of your book (in large font) and your name below it. You can even add illustrations! Every time you write or type your story, you will see the cover page first and it will motivate you to complete the book. “This worked for me for my first book ‘Little Indians’,” says the author.

Books by Pika Nani

Little Indians: Stories from across the country

The Adventures of Shrilok Homeless

Shrilock Homeless: The Ultimate Adventures Volume 2

The writer’s routine

Pika says that she is, what she calls, a “visual writer”. “I imagine the scene and write what I see,” she explains. “I write in the mornings and afternoons. But if a deadline is near, then I am at my laptop till late night as well. I usually like to get the ideas on paper, from a general outline of the story and protect from there.”

Bet you didn’t know that Pika Nani is not really a pen name, though it has eventually become hers! (The writer’s name is Deepika Murthy.) When she was about two or three years old and people would ask her name, she would end up saying ‘Pika Nani’ when she actually meant to say Deepika Rani, a title she had given herself after hearing all the Raja Rani stories, she thinks! She writes a poem once in a while, when the inspiration strikes.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Siddhartha was born Guwahati in Assam and he lived for the first 18 years of his life on the campus of Gauhati University. He started writing for publication when he was seven – first in school magazines and then for newspapers. “Before that, I used to write small stories for myself, or tell them to whoever was interested. I started reading chapter books around the same time. So I really can’t tell if reading stories got me to start writing, or I liked reading because I responded to stories and to telling them,” says the writer.

Writing the Siddhartha Sarma

Siddhartha insists there is no single way to being a writer, and what works for one kind of person might not work for another. However, he has put down what he has learnt over these years. According to him, there are three things a good writer needs.

Read: “First, you need to read. At this stage in your life, when your mind is fresh and memory sharp, you need to read as much as possible. I remember almost everything that I read till I was 18. You can afford to be indiscriminate. You can read across genres. You can read good writing and bad, because it is only when you have read enough bad writing will you know what to avoid. Afterwards, when you are older and have less time, you can specialize in genres or writers. For how, just read every single printed word you can find. Don’t count the number of books you have read. It’s being rude to your mind. Don’t set targets. Don’t read for other people. Just read.”

Write: “Good writing is also about craft. All the books you read will not help you become a good writer unless you have done a lot of practice and discovered what your strengths and weaknesses are. Before writing about the world, you should explore every corner of your mind, and writing practice helps you do that. There is no fixed ration of reading to writing that I can recommend but at this stage in your life, give some time to writing just for yourself. Publication can wait.

Live: “This one is super important and very difficult. Go out, explore the world, study humans, animals, systems, structures, ideas. Experience the complexities of the human condition. The best writers always write about things that matter to humans even when they are writing about dragons and aliens and robots. The best writers have a profound understanding of what it means to be human. And the best way to discover it is to live, make mistakes. Learn. Watch other humans (that gives you templates for your characters).”

Siddhartha Sarma’s books

1. Year of the Weeds


2. 103 Historical Mysteries, Puzzles, Conundrums and Stuff


3. 103 Journeys, Voyages, Trip and Stuff


4. The Grasshopper’s Run

Inspiration from the real world is of essence to him, “When I write, I go into a small place in my head, which is very precious for me. The place where I grew up was beautiful, wooded, full of ponds and small creatures. The small place in my head is my personal copy of this real place. I go there because it gives me a sense of peace, quiet and focus. So you could say that I am inspired by the world, and by my childhood.”

The writer’s routine

He says he tries to write in a simple manner and lets the characters drive the story. “I don’t like using big words or long sentences, adverbs or exclamation marks, he says. “My favourite time is at night, preferably between midnight and four in the morning. That’s when I write. I think about what I am going to write during the rest of the day, I have no standard process. But sometimes, while writing a novel, I write scenes from different points in the story, and then put things together later, like shooting a film.” He confesses he doesn’t usually make a storyboard but he might just begin to.

Bet you did not know that Siddhartha is a trained swordmaker and marksman. That he thinks he is rather boring, in spite of his hobby of collecting comic books, classic die-cast car models and swords. “These aren’t really uncommon things to do,” he says.

 

Picture Credit : Google