Thank you for being here.  I am raising money for the Himalayan Cataracts Project featured in Human Planet: Mountains. You may remember the heartwarming story of Teteeni Thami living in the foothills of the Himalayas who had her eyesight restored for just £25.00 by Dr. Sanduk Ruit and his amazing team at HCP.   Last August I hiked up Pen Y Fan - very similar to the type of trails Teteeni would have to navigate... and. like her, I did it 'blind'.  My wonderful friends from Cardiff Actors Workshop were my guides.

We have now reached my first target THANK YOU. Another event will follow this year ... this matters to me, if you'd like to know why please read on ...

 

When I was a girl I dreamt of the Himalayas. Sitting on my grandfathers veranda chewing sugar cane or falling asleep beneath white mosquito netting in my grandmother’s bed I would imagine the people of the mountains, just a few hundred miles away from the steamy Bengali plains.

 

Many years later when I was finally ready I made my first trip.  I remember stepping off the plane in Kathmandu feeling I had come home. Every smell, colour and gesture of that country was mine, and by the time I reached the mountains, I was hopelessly in love.

 

On my trek I spent most of my time with the Sherpa boys, playing, and running through the hills. I spoke to them in a few words of broken Bengali and through shared gestures and rhythms learnt from my grandparents, with whom I had never shared a language but who I understood so well.

 

As I moved through those mountains, I became more and more sure -footed and I thought I could spend the rest of my life skipping up and down those paths. The mountains were captivating, and the people as extraordinary as I had imagined.

 

In every village I met beautiful, stoic women, dignified and sure, who would look me in the eye in recognition and call me sister or granddaughter. They were the embodiment of grace and womanhood.

 

Two years ago whilst working on Human Planet for the BBC I met an elderly Himalayan woman named Teteeni. She was blind. She had not seen the mountains for 3 years. Yet even through her blindness I saw the firm backbone and fearless nature of those women I had encountered on so many paths before.

 

I spent three days by Teteeni’s side, adjusting her microphone for filming and straightening her sari.  She never spoke directly to me, but she always knew I was there.

 

When her eye patches came off, I was standing opposite her.  She blinked like a child, squinting in the sun, and as she carefully examined her new world I saw her smile for the first time. It was one of those fleeting moments that reaffirms the preciousness of life.  A moment where hope runs right through you.

 

Once filming was done, I went over to Teteeni and automatically started adjusting her sari. “Oh, it’s you” she said simply, then touched my nose gently with her forefinger, “granddaughter”.