Chennai's Muthamil Selvi becomes first TN woman to climb all seven summits

CHENNAI: Just ten days ago, Muthamil Selvi Narayanan made history by becoming the first woman from Tamil Nadu to climb the highest summits on the seven continents, after conquering Mount McKinley in Denali, North America. At around 6,190 metres above sea level, it was a life-or-death moment for Muthamil as she reached this milestone.

Hailing from Virudhunagar and settled in Chennai with her daughters, Muthamil’s husband has moved to Japan for work. Like thousands of homemakers, there was a feeling of inadequacy that creeped in along with an inferior complex of having excelled only in household chores.

“I was married as soon as I completed Class 12 but I couldn’t accept that I had no ambition. That pushed me to pursue a Bachelor’s in Computer Application, and I also completed an intermediate level in the Japanese language in 2016,” recalls Muthamil, whose ambitious journey took a major turn during the 2020-pandemic.

Redemption from defeat

When the entire world shut down, it adversely impacted her children. It was a choice between family and career, and Muthamil, like millions of women in India, quit her job to be a stay-at-home mother.

“That felt like a personal defeat. I wanted to set an example for many homemakers, who hide their pain by shouldering familial responsibilities. After researching for a couple of days without sleep, I decided to create a ‘blindfold world record’. The reason behind the blindfold is to spread the message of why a few men should remove the blindfolds they have and become a backbone for the success of women in their lives,” she elaborates.

Muthamil climbed down a mountain at Malaipattu in Sriperumbudur with a blindfold within 58 seconds, and created the world record on March 7, 2021, a day before Women’s Day.

While accolades poured in for her feat, her children, however, were disturbed by something else – multitude of media reports on sexual assault on women. “They asked me why many youngsters die by suicide when they could have spoken about their troubles to their parents. That prompted me to create awareness on how right parenting nourishes the mental wellbeing of children and helps them share their inner turmoil,” she states.

Muthamil decided to create another world record with the Unico World Record, along with her two daughters. “We travelled to Kolang in Himachal Pradesh. With just three days of practice, I carried my 9-year-old daughter on my back, along with my 12-year-old daughter in tow, and climbed down the cliff alone – all of us were blindfolded. This was to depict how kids need the support of parents to overcome the lowest points in their lives,” she elucidates.

Top of the world

Going down memory lane, when Muthamil reminisced about one of her childhood memories related to Mount Everest. “I’m not a trained mountaineer. So, I underwent strenuous training in 2022. Getting sponsorship was the toughest challenge, and so was tolerating humiliation and disrespect,” she recalls.

However, the Tamil Nadu government came through to support the 36-year-old’s ambition to scale the world’s highest peak.

Remembering the days at the Mount Everest camps in 2023, a grateful Muthamil shares, “When I slipped from a rock, thankfully my leg got stuck onto something. When I checked what held me, it was the frozen body of a person who had died more than a decade ago. That’s when I started noticing a lot of such corpses around me.”

Mount Everest demands utmost training, commitment, fearlessness and luck, to some extent, to reach the top. Trained trekkers doubted Muthamil’s capabilities. “While returning from the summit, my oxygen drained out. I cried from the guilt of not keeping my promise to my kids that I would return safely. I started feeling the numbness, and that’s when Andrew, a Mexican, came to my rescue. Through him, I realised that humanity does exist. We both reached the base camp safely by sharing his oxygen cylinder,” she notes.

She urges the Tamil Nadu government to honour Andrew for his humanitarian act. It took 57 days for her to complete the Everest summit.

Making history

After becoming the first Tamil woman to reach Mount Everest, Muthamil aspired to climb more peaks. She’s now the first Tamil woman to complete the seven summits and also the fastest Indian to achieve this within two years.

Among the seven peaks, her final expedition to Denali proved the most difficult. “We had to carry 80 kg of luggage, and the temperature was minus 50-degree Celsius. The raging winds made the journey even harder. We had to rest for 16 hours, facing a near-death experience while descending the peak,” shudders Muthamil, who received the Kalpana Chawla Award from the State government in 2023.

Muthamil was accompanied by Shaikh Hassan Khan, the only Seven Summiteer from Kerala. Recognising the seriousness of the situation, Shaikh approached the Kerala government to initiate rescue operations.

This passionate mountaineer credits her daughters as the foundation of her success. Her story is so inspiring that there are questions about Muthamil in TNPSC’s examination. “I’m not only a trekker. I’ve set a world record by doing archery while riding a horse, inspired by Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar. If one is determined to reach their goal, the journey becomes unstoppable,” states Muthamil, who is now keen to learn car racing.