Adventure and Breaking Barriers - WeUnlearn with Deeya
We are doing a series to emphasize the need for unlearning, to generate awareness regarding the soft skills and mindset to lead a healthy life, and to urge people to #FundtheFuture, our ongoing fundraising campaign.
Second in this series, we got a chance to speak to the person who was part of the first father-daughter duo to climb the Everest! We share with you her take on adventure an breaking barriers based on our conversation.
Pallavi - How was your experience growing up in the field of adventure?
Deeya - It's always been an extremely male dominated field. Even on expeditions, most of the time the gender ratio will be completely skewed. For most of my expeditions it was always 1 other womxn and 5 big guys, or sometimes just me and 8 other men. So it is something you see a lot in this field and again it is because mountaineering is associated with males and macho-ism and being like this fearless dude….
Pallavi - It’s linked with masculinity, right!?
Deeya - Correct, and then being a girl and doing it, I got comments from vague friends being like
“ok now you stop climbing because how will you find a husband”
and it’s such a joke to me because why should that be the purpose of my life. Shouldn’t the purpose of my life be making an impact, or inspiring other people, doing amazing things with the platform that I have right now. Why are you guys worried about my husband, why is that your concern!?
Swetha - I have interacted a lot with family businesses and even if there is let's say a male and female heir to the business somehow the womxn has to prove her worth way more than the man even within the family business. It is a male dominated society and there’s the fact that you have chosen an unconventional field. It just becomes doubly hard to even get started on whatever dream you have to take it to the next level.
Deeya - Exactly, I am a mountaineer but then what I do professionally is work with my family business. It's an adventure tourism organization and we take a lot of students and corporates to our campsite in Rishikesh. We do team building, training, development and then we also do soft adventure activities like rafting, zip-lining, hiking.
That aspect of the business is also so challenging as a womxn at times because our entire adventure team is like 15 guys, they are absolutely fantastic, honestly I couldn’t ask for a better team, but yes of course being a womxn has added challenges especially in this leadership position. You constantly have to be like 10x better and 10x stronger. You constantly try to prove yourself physically even which is sometimes not possible.
At the end of the day physically it is sometimes difficult to keep up with the guys just by virtue of the fact that biologically they do have a little bit more of an advantage. But that's never stopped me from being able to do something. I think “Yeah you might be able to carry 5 kgs more but that doesn't mean that we both won’t complete the trek and that I won’t carry my weight. I’ll still carry everything I need and I'll make it to the end of our mission whatever it is.”
And that being said even on these major climbs, I’ve always felt like it’s important to train hard and be fit and then use your own physical capabilities as a way to move forward with conversations, as opposed to making it about “oh you are a guy so you can carry more”.
I think it’s more about pushing yourself, doing what you can, and understanding your own capabilities regardless of gender.
I think just framing it in your head also is super important. Constantly just telling yourself that “hey this is not about me being a girl, this is about me being a professional. I’m gonna do the best of my professional capabilities and this is what I bring to the table. It may not be intense physical strength but then I make up for that by being incredibly good at logistics, or guest relations, or making the entire trip more entertaining if that’s what it is.”
Everyone brings their own strengths and I try to address that conversation in my head by removing gender.
Pallavi - The point where you mentioned that you had this pressure of getting married, it linked to the aspiration aspect of gender norms, where boys are expected to be ambitious but girls are not. But you wanted to be ambitious. You are still facing limitations because of how gendered the whole mountaineering space is, you have your own set of challenges and you’re dealing with those as well.
I would love to hear more from you about what are some of the things that you are doing that keeps you going? What qualities, ideas, belief systems, anything that you had to tell yourself to become the entrepreneur that you are today?
Deeya - I love adventure, I am so passionate about it. I went on my first hike before I could even walk, on dad’s back, and when I was 13 I went to the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering and did this adventure course. The 2 weeks I was there were a very different life than anything I had experienced growing up. We were living in dorms, and we were like 30 girls sharing 3 bathrooms, we were outdoors but for me it didn’t matter, physical discomfort was such a small aspect of adventure.
There’s so much else that you are learning, it’s such a present!
You are out in nature- all I had was a backpack with everything that I needed in my bag and walking for hours to an end on some of the most incredible trails. The people you might be with are from completely different worlds, they might speak different languages, they might be completely different ages but at the end of the day when you’ve gotten out and done this thing together and you come back together in your tent and you’re talking about it and the connections you make are incredible. You connect with people in such an essential way that is absolutely amazing!
I’ve felt that's something that adventure’s really given me in the sense that in today’s day and age everyone’s so focused on finding differences and they’re so focused on saying “ok you’re immigrants, you're a different religion, you’re different nationality” and just trying to create divides between people based on that; I just think adventure took that away for me and it just made me realize that at the end of the day there’s this essential humanity that connects everyone.
And so, regardless of religion, regardless of language, regardless of age, regardless of gender I think it just comes down to finding that essential humanity and making connections with people based on that.
I think when you genuinely connect in that way all barriers start to be removed and at the end of the day it comes down to“we all are humans trying to do this thing”. So I've started approaching problems with this mindset that I’m not going to look at the differences that are in a conversation, discourse, or in any situation. I will not try and look at the disconnects with the person that I’m trying to engage with but I’ll always try to look for the similarities and move forward from there.
Swetha - But doesn’t it get frustrating when it’s a constant daily struggle as a womxn even for things like wearing shorts outside in delhi or being nervous about going down a dark alley?
Deeya - Exactly it's very easy to go down this path of being frustrated and it can get really demoralizing, it can get demotivating, it can get frustrating. But then again the other thing mountaineering has really taught me is to reframe every situation that I’m in and just to stay positive through it all and not focus on all of the negative things.
When you start focusing on the positives you start making slow movements to whatever it is you feel will give you that final independence.
For me it's been a lot about talking to other girls, talking to school students and sharing this message with them. I’m not saying “all of you have to go climb Mt. Everest” but I’m saying “think a little bit beyond what you thought your capabilities were and are, and dream a little bit bigger for yourselves”.
What I’ve tried to do is every time I’m in a situation feeling frustrated I try and go the opposite end. I try to focus on the positives that I have, focus on everything good that I have and try to spread that rather than the frustrations that of course you do feel being a womxn in this field.
I guess struggle is an essential part of life and it sucks that we womxn have to deal with it a little bit more but if you go into a situation with your chin up and the attitude that “I’m going to deal with it, I’m just going to kill it” then it just ends up being a great experience and then shitty things happen but they are inconsequential as compared to the really amazing things that happen.
Swetha - I think it is very important for us to understand what you have realised and for other womxn to practice is that it is very easy for us to be frustrated and get knocked down by the oppressor’s inequality that is handed out to you but if you let that consume you whether you are doing a professional venture or not you’re going to end up being the victim, right. To not be a victim you need that hope, to dream bigger.
That is something that you’ve learnt that really touched me and what I think will touch a lot of womxn and I think they need to learn from. What are the few things that keep you going?
Deeya -You beautifully encapsulated what I was trying to say!
So my father and I have been climbing mountains together and we started going out on our expeditions as a father-daughter team.
When two years ago we climbed Mt. Everest, we really highlighted the fact that we were India's first father-daughter team, and this was solely to spread the most important message- daughters can.
I think our daughters are capable of so much, us womxn are capable of so much. And in a country like India family support sort of tends to be this foundation where if your family is supporting you it makes it very very easy to build up on that support. There might be some smaller battles you’re dealing with but if you have that initial support it’s much easier for you to move forward.
But if you’re fighting with your family on a foundational basis to try and achieve your goals it makes your life so much more difficult because family has such an important role to play. We are a family oriented country and we really wanted to really spread this message that- us daughters can do a lot but you’ve got to be there supporting us, and believing in our aspirations.
