Looking for the Third Man

Several hours earlier I had passed through the last patches of green where gold-furred mountain dogs, companionable otherwise, were busy crunching on bones. A sort of picturesque Golgotha, a local in a homemade poncho modelled from worn tarpaulin informed me that a sky burial site was nearby. Now I was high above the treeline – not that there were many trees – and was almost cresting the trek at Dolma La, 5,640 metres. Save for a fleeting glimpse early that morning, the Mount Kailas had been eluding me by ducking behind cloudbanks and other mountains and powdery snow which hung about like the aftermath of some unearthly avalanche. All around me was an immense white expanse with just the teardrop Gaurikund adding a dash of green. A prayer flag tied to some promontory far above hung still over the couloir I was treading and flung itself over the precipice that overlooked the Gaurikund. It was eerie-still and a prayer flag is far from irenic when it is not fluttering and beseeching benedictions for you.

The trek was part assignment and part self-discovery; besides the filming I was also intent on sorting some grudges and prejudices nobody else knew I held. I was gasping for breath with every step but I sucked in the silence; the cathedral-quiet surrounding was greatly conducive for the long-due introspection. The others I had left far behind and thankfully there were not many hiring ponies as they were prohibitively expensive; some even trundled back to base town Darchen. It was just me and the flags, the jutting boulders and the snow-smothered crags. I sat down next to a tall cairn to catch my breath when I sensed that there was somebody else. Probably watching me from above or just round the bend. I got up, looked around and shouted; all the climbing had left me parched, some water was welcome. Maybe I was a little scared too – I had never seen any landscape so still, so settled. The flags enhanced the solitude; mist condensed and trickled from their pointy ends. There was no one; I mean there was nobody I could see but I could distinctly sense there was somebody. It followed me closely the rest of the way, actually hovered around me like a genie. Soon I learnt to ignore it and get on with my sorting. The climate changed rapidly as it does at those altitudes – over the next few hours there was a fierce gale followed by a blizzard. Soon the paths were covered with snow and I lost my way. This ‘presence’ besides getting frisky once in a while – maybe I was tripping on my own guilt – actually prodded me across an iced-over lake to a nomad’s camp some hours later. It was not the regular route – which had disappeared under a landslide, of which I came to know only later. It was my first concrete brush with the Third Man.

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

(TS Eliot, ‘The Waste Land,’ 1922)

The Third Man was originally the fourth man.

‘Ship and stores have gone – so now we’ll go home.’ Said Sir Ernest Shackleton to his crew surveying the mess they were in. The legendary English explorer and his men had set out in August 1914 with the mission to cross the Antarctic on foot. Stuck in ice for a year, they finally decided to abandon ship in October, 1915. They dragged small boats and rations over ice for five months before reaching the sea. After three days of rough sailing they reached Elephant Island off the Antarctic Peninsula. From the 28 who constituted his crew, Shackleton chose five to go with him to seek help from South Georgia over a thousand kilometres away. With great difficulty and on the verge of death and insanity due to lack of drinking water they reached South Georgia. But their destination was a whaling station at Stromness which was on the other side of the island, 38 km away, across glaciers and over 20 peaks each over 2,000 metres. Shackleton began this final leg of his journey with two others to minimise casualty in case of any eventuality. Of all his earlier expeditions – which had won him the knighthood – he considered this journey to be the highlight. ‘I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three,’ he wrote later in his epic South. This ‘fourth’ man silently led the way, egging the haggard bunch on. Applying poetic license, Eliot changed the ‘fourth man’ to the ‘third man’ in his epic poem which stuck.

‘They were suffering from dehydration, and that was pushing them over into the half world where physical and mental phenomena meet. Delusion hovered in the air.’ Wrote Shackleton biographer Roland Huntford. In fact celebrated neurologist Macdonald Critchley, the first scientist to describe the Third Man in his essay ‘Idea of Presence’ defined it as: ‘A feeling, or an impression – sometimes amounting to a veritable delusion – that the person concerned is not alone. Or, if it should be that he is actually in the company of others, that there is also some other being present, when really this is not so.’ Noted physiologist Dr Griffith Pugh who was part of the first successful Everest expedition by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953 dismissed the Third Man as ‘hallucinations caused by extreme cold, exhaustion and lack of oxygen.’ It was, he said, a ‘decay of brain functions.’ This was seconded by researchers Donald Heath and David Reid Williams in their book Man at High Altitude where the ‘phantom companion’ was attributed to ‘hypoxia (condition marked by lack of sufficient oxygen reaching the brain) exerting a severe effect on higher cerebral functions.’ However they also added that: ‘The phantom companion at extreme altitudes is probably fabricated in the mind to bring some psychological support in a very insecure situation.’

Even if it is the conjuring of a delirious mind or as the religious affirm, the finding of god under severe duress, the fact remains that the Third Man has made his appearance on hundreds of occasions across the world and has saved countless lives. Aviator Charles Lindbergh spoke of ‘phantoms’ and ‘presences’ he conversed with during his solo, transatlantic flight which advised him and discussed problems of navigation and kept him awake and thereby, alive. The greatest climber in history Reinhold Messner felt a ‘third climber’ next to him while descending the Nanga Parbat with his brother Gunther who was to die shortly. Ron DiFrancesco, a 9/11 survivor, remembers an ‘angel’ who led him down the burning floors to safety moments before the tower collapsed. Indian climber and IPS officer Parash Moni Das pinned his escape to ‘a someone, a friend’ who urged him to focus after an accident on June 3, 1981, which claimed the life of a fellow climber. There are hundreds of other instances where the Third Man has come to the rescue in hopeless situations. I am sure scores more will emerge from the recent calamities in Nepal too.

The Third Man not just saves distressed travellers but comforts the depressed and lonely ones. He will talk gently and listen eagerly, he will help you sort stuff and even sets you on the right path. The Third Man is a kind of Superman where you are the Krypton.

Heck, you are the Third Man!