Jayal Narendra Dhar

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Biografie:
Narendra Dhar Jayal (1926 - 1958)
Major N. D. Jayal died of pneumonia on Cho Oyu, on April 28, when leader of an Indian expedition attempting the second ascent of the mountain.
I first saw Nandu in the summer of 1935, when he and his cousin Nalni Dhar were brought to me by the head of the family, his father, Pandit Chakra Dhar Jayal, Diwan of the hill state of Tehri Garhwal.
The Doon School was due to open for the first time in September ; the Pandit was anxious to get the boys installed as soon as possible, but as they were only 8 years old they could only be admitted in January 1936, when we took some younger boys.
Nandu was as scruffy a small boy as could be imagined ; Nalni was a model of neatness and propriety. So they continued with Nalni always signing the Honours Book and Nandu exhausting all the measures we could think of for extracting work or discipline. He stayed nine years at school, ending as head of his House and captain of school boxing. l-Ie left in December 1944 and immediately appeared before a Selection Board for the Army. In those days a psychiatrist was an influential member of the Board. Nandu was given a higher rating by the board than any candidate that year, largely on the psychiatrist's report that he had an outstanding interest in training subordinates. This was correct, as he had an extraordinary capacity for getting the best at school out of junior boys training for House competitions. He was far from an assiduous scholar, though he had a good brain, nor did he ever inspire enthusiasm from the weaker disciplinarians on the school staff. But he had an intense loyalty to his friends and to the school, and unequalled physical courage and toughness.
In 1940 R. L. Holdsworth joined the staff and became Nandu's housemaster. Nandu absorbed all Holdsworth's interests in mountaineering and in skikar, and long before he left school was able to make a positive contribution to the many expeditions in which he accompanied Holdsworth.
N andu had a keen appreciation of English literature and read widely, his taste being inclined towards Thomas Hardy and Housman. I will always remember him in the title part of Richard of Bordeaux in the school open -air theatre. It seemed to suit his school life exactly an intense loyalty to certain people and principles, combined with a disregard of the tedious obligations of life in a community.
After he left I never saw him until he visited me at Ottershaw in 1957. This visit was a great delight. His outstanding virtues of courage and loyalty had made his career in the Army a real success, and his toughness and love of the mountains had brought him to a post which he fitted exactly. It was no light matter to be Nandu's Headmaster; and it was a considerable reward to see him having discarded completely the fatalistic outlook of the Shropshire Lad. The Himalayas had completed his education into a stature of enduring nobility.
Nandu had a considerable experience in the Himalayas. After visits to Kashmir and Garhwal in 1940 and 1942 he took part in Holdsworth's attempt on Bandar Punch in 1946 and made the second ascents of Abi Gamin (1952) and Kamet (1955). He had been Chief Instructor to 19 Div. Ski School at Gulmarg in the winter of 1948-9. Later, he was appointed Director of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute at Darjeeling and wrote an article in The Mountain World, 1955, on the training given at the Institute. On February 26, 1957, he exhibited some films of their activities to the Alpine Club.
In 1954 he went to a Guide's Course of six weeks' duration at Champex and was awarded the Swiss Guide's badge and diploma. A sound leader, who had an excellent influence on the younger generation, his loss is a great blow to Indian mountaineering.
A. E. Foot
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 63. Nr. 297, 1958, Seite 231-232


Geboren am:
1926
Gestorben am:
28.04.1958