Thank You for Saving Our Bengali Girl Sunita Hazra – An Open Letter to Leslie John Binns from Top Five Buzz Team
Dear Sir,
Thank you for making us believe that mankind can still hope in humanity. You see, the purpose of this open letter was actually inspired from Sunita Hazra’s account of how you came to her rescue when she had lost all hopes of seeing her family again! How when you were just a few meters close to reaching the Everest Summit (something which still holds a place of appeal in the heart of many climbers) but decided to turn around when you saw Sunita lying down in a critical state of health and had no hopes of continuing further.
To Sunita, you were like a God in disguise of a British climber. But for me, you are like a burning ray of hope that the world is full of all nice people. That if we cannot find one, we can always be one.
The newspapers and the internet got filled up with reports (as testified by Sunita from the Norvic Kathmandu Hospital) of how you abandoned your long-time dream and rushed to her aid. The rest of the world read and saluted the spirit in you. But honestly speaking, many of us don’t even know much about you.
All that I could summarize from other reports is that climbing the Everest Mountain had always been your childhood dream. I had never gone on a mountain climbing expedition myself, but I do understand that each of these expeditions require huge finance backup and massive organization support. Money is a huge factor and which many have to wait for years in order to make proper arrangement for the expedition. I take it that you are aware of this too and that at the age of 42 years old, you finally had your dreams come true. You were only 12 hours away from reaching your goal, which you could see was barely 450 meters away. Completing the trek would have got your name added to the list of 5,000 odd mountaineers who had scaled the Everest – the world’s highest peak on their first ascent, ever since the 1953 climb made by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Who know whether this was your first and your last chance to visit the Everest! Even you must have also been aware of this when you decided to take the turn and climb down instead.  And yet nothing deterred you from doing it, not even the pain of losing your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that started to slip out of your grip.
They (the reports) tell me that you were an ex-serviceman who had spent nearly 13 years, serving the army in Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan –places that are already so war-torn with disturbances. And that’s what the irony is you know. A wide crevice forms differentiate out people like you from the rest of us.
That, despite being blessed with a peaceful life and a place to live in, despite being able to be so close with our family members, we are yet so selfish when it comes to stooping down and helping others in dire need. You on the other hand Sir, are much more than just a common man for you have a heart that does not shroud something illogical with a well-crafted logical statement. Salute to you Sir from the entire Top Five team!
Respectfully,
Top Five Buzz Team
