Fortune hunters

The word adventure owes its existence to two words -- the old French word auenture which meant fortune or chance and the Latin word adventura which meant arrival. The two coalesced into one to enter the Middle English vocabulary as adventure which meant a perilous undertaking that would lead one to fortune. From one came many, as it happens with all creation and over time words such as, misadventure, adventurer made it to the lexicon. Over the years, the meaning of the word too changed – adventure mellowed down to denote the spirit that led men to climb mountains and cross the seas.

The spirit of adventure led Vasco da Gama to steer his motley crew to the unknown shores of a country that was still to meld its fragmented wadas and tehsils into a contiguous boundary. He was looking to spread the message of his religion and, in the process, take back the riches of the East that he had heard so much about. This is the spirit that infused mountaineers and explorers who felt that they owed it to humanity to go where no one had gone before.

Adventure mellowed some more and found itself curled up in books about swashbuckling heroes and villains and about children courting danger as they confronted thieves and evil. It aligned itself with fun and bravery and was almost always seen fighting on the side of good in its war against evil.

Today adventure seems to have reinvented itself yet again and in so doing reverted to a chilling shadow of its former self. As Bombay cowered under the nameless, senseless terror unleashed by a bunch of 10 terrorists, adventure seemed to wear the face of a young man who has no time for fear nor the inclination for contemplation and remorse. He is a soldier of fortune. A soldier who takes to battle not to defend his home or life but for the thrill of risk, for a charismatic leader, to fight against a perceived threat to his existence or that of his religion and for the sake of bounty.

Perhaps in the evolution of the word, lies a clue about the evolution of the human mind.