Offering to an unsung hero

On the 50th anniversary of her father's triumphant conquest of Everest, Nima Tenzing Galang's Filipino husband and my former colleague, artist Noli Galang, died. I called her in Manila and reminded her amidst her grief of her own small part in the Everest saga. As Tenzing Norgay, a Himalayan Sherpa porter, set out on that epochal journey, she had given him a blue ballpoint pen which he left on the peak with offerings of biscuits, chocolates and Buddhist prayers.

She was a little girl then. My own schoolboy memories of this week, 50 years ago, are of elation at the achievement and anger at the politics that diminished it.

Why is the anniversary this week, you might ask, when Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper, and Tenzing conquered Everest on May 29, 1953? The answer is that the news was suppressed until June 2, to coincide with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Only then did we know that the lanky, long-faced Sir Edmund's first words after coming down were: 'We knocked the bastard off!' The British reduced Everest to a royal prop.

James Morris of London's Times newspaper had exclusive rights to the news. I greatly enjoyed Mr Morris' imperial nostalgia, but my instinctive anglophilism was already at odds with nascent loyalty to an India that had been independent for less than six years and a republic for less than three.

Who reached the summit first? Sir Edmund said he did. Then, as the subcontinent grumbled indignantly, he suggested they had made the final ascent 'almost together'. Tenzing's dignified comment was that they 'climbed as a team'. He was a natural diplomat.

After Tenzing's death in 1986, Sir Edmund repeated his own claim to have reached the summit first. The controversy overshadows the jubilee, as does the Sherpa's inferior status. He is Everest's 'unsung hero', as someone put it.