In extremity, courage becomes routine....

let us go back in time....far far back.( 1076 BC)
Imagine your very distant(in the past i mean) ancestor clutching a clump of grass at a clearing at the center of the then amazon rain forest...
imagine his face contorted in extreme concentration, oblivious to the demonic pitter patter of the torrential downpour all around him, oblivious also to the complete darkness and the bone chilling cold seeping into his body due to the rain.
Imagine him using all his then known and practised skills of hunting knowledge to keep utterly still, and while not a breath escaped him, to plunge with the unerring accuracy, and confidence of a hundred such encounters, onto the now terrified back of the hitherto unsuspecting spotted deer, his hard earned dinner to-be...


let us now fast forward to .....(1034 AD).
this lone man dared out for a quick kill for his hunger...
this man is running hard, gasping for breath, he runs as if his very life depended upon it...( that night perhaps it did... but that life was prolonged by his exertions. no matter what he was to do he would die that night...)
the stars were blinking furiously, egging him on, willing him to run as fast as he could. he ran to get away from it. (it was the only thing he could do... he would never have done it if he knew what was in store for him.)
he actually dared a backward glance, the terrain was ruddy and rugged, patched up with shrubs and prickly bushes. then suddenly in that moment of indescision, in that second of dismal realisation, it was on him.
the man could not even start to comprehend the extreme swiftness of the attack, the first bite of the jaguar tore into the occiput and trapezal muscles, severing the cartoids and crushing vice like onto the bone of mans hand. his legs buckled as his knees gave way. he was now on his back gazing with blurry vision at the now still twinkling stars. It was as if the gods were laughing...
It was then, in the extreme edge of his conciousness, in the very gauntlet of his mind drugged in pain that he saw it. the sky erupted in a huge explosion of light. the rapid outward movement of a ball of fire in the sky produced as much light as the sun did at daytime.. that was the last time the man opened his eyes...
five hundred miles away chinese astronomers of that age recorded the first ever documented supernova in the observable universe.

the russian convoys...( 1943 AD)
Cold men, cold at heart and body, walked drone like to their respective action stations aboard the battle flagship HMS Viking. they were men deprived of sleep. men who tottered on the edge of exhaustion, many actually had gone over the edge, they just did their job with a mechanical efficiency.
The cold was unbearable, the scale reading thirty degrees of frost and the barometer dillidallying with the temperature guage in a dance of death.
It was when this man was standing at the side aisle aft to the bulkheads that the torpedo struck, (the viking was carrying 16000 tons of crude oil on the convoy consisting of 29 ships heading for russia). the rapidity of the strike coupled with the cracking of the pressure hull paralysed the shell shocked man.
He was thrown over the side as the ship cracked apart at the deadcentre, discharging her deadly fl;aming cargo into the sea. this was when he saw the others, men from his own boat in various stages of despair... the luckiest and the fastest to die were the men falling clear of the oil, into the ice cold arctic sea, where the sudden temperature change of about 100 degrees killed instantly.
luck was never his even in death. he already knew the effect of burning oil on the ocean surface, it having a lesser density than water kept the body afloat longer and there was no merciful extinction by drowning. the oil also uses up all the oxygen on the surface so that the combined effect of the deadly burning capability and asphyxation killed with subtle refinements in agony.
the man died a true warrior, in the death throes of pain and utter unspeakable agony, he never let the flames have the satisfaction of touching his tears...

the smoky dawn...( 2006 AD)...
the man was tearing past seven armed persons, trigger ready, he escapes by a hairs breadth. he is tired, he knows that he is grossly outnumbered. he knows that even with his most cunning tactics in field operations he would leave the ruins dead, with a cold bullet through his heart.
all this he knew, but human reason flies out of the window the moment men fight for survival.
the gut instincts kick in, surging the veins with adrenaline, increasing heart beat rate.
suddenly the power goes out and the man (lacking an UPS) slams his hand onto the keyboard raving at the lost chance to kill the cornered counter terrorist in the game CS...
this is life as we know it... now....

the void....( aftermath...)
we have progressed as a civilisation of strong to weak physically and mentally... people then could cope with far more than any present day individual. we have lost the thrill of being in the actual situation, of being in extreme situations where every faculty of our persona is tested to the full.
we live in a lacklusture world. the void we feel whenever we encounter the unknown, leaving us with a primate fear deep inside is reason enough to liven things up a bit.
how many people have done things in their lives with a risk factor more than ten percent?..
how many have broken through the self imposed shackles of modern civilisation to tell the world their would be exploits to serendipity?
how many?...

hope for all, will for some, courage for one.... be the one....