{"id":89780,"date":"2019-06-03T05:29:54","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T12:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=89780"},"modified":"2019-06-03T05:29:54","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T12:29:54","slug":"adventure-amusing-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/06\/03\/adventure-amusing-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventure \u2013 Amusing reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Attempts to conquer\nheights, be it a mountain or any other carry their own perils and risks.\nGenerally, glory and peril walk side by side in such endeavors, until the\nformer or the latter wins, in the end\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already eleven or twelve\nclimbers have perished on the slopes of the Mount Everest, in this year alone\nand that is only so far. This sad news made me ponder on \u2018the diverse nature of\nadventure and that craving for a bit of it present in almost every human being\nand the question how much or less of it in each one of us is there, longing for\nthose quests, some of which are unbelievably dangerous?\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now at one end of the\nscale are the minimal risk takers with hardly any love for or sense of\nadventure at all, who cannot even be persuaded to climb anything higher than an\nanthill or dare venture out further than to a depth around knee level in any\nwater body, be it a pool, a lake, a river or even the mighty ocean. They live\nlives governed by the principle that as long as you keep away from everything\nthat has even the slightest chance of going wrong, you are safe. However, the\nquestion is can you find such absolute and guaranteed safety in this world of\nours, where your safety depends as much on numerous external factors that are\nbeyond your control? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet our minimal risk\ntakers don\u2019t get deterred or disturbed by such arguments. They would as best as\nthey can try to avoid anything and everything that they think may put them in\ndanger. And they are also firm believers in superstition so much so that they\nwill truly think that the little house gecko, who is going after a mosquito on\na wall suddenly abandons its stalking and decides to come up with its usual\nchattering call \u2018chuck, chuck, chuck\u2019, is actually telling them that it\u2019s a\nforeboding. And one of them might even hurriedly start looking for that\nhandbook of \u2018Huunu Sasthare\u2019, if it happens to be at his\/her home. Or what\nabout that innocuous looking black cat that happens to be crossing the same\npatch of the road that our superstitious friend is walking along? Would his\ncasual thoughts as regards it be limited in extent to \u2018oh a poor stray cat on\nthe prowl\u2019: I doubt it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now at the other end of\nthe scale are sitting the exact opposite, who enjoy risk-taking and relish it,\ngoing for adventures of all sorts, mostly very dangerous and doing it for the\nsake of glory, sheer thrill, sense of achievement and so on and so forth.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And apart from those\nextremely challenging and dangerous adventures such as mountain-climbing, there\nare other equally dangerous and at the same time immensely foolish ones too\nthat some of our friends at the other extreme end of the scale tend to go for.\nTo keep it short, I will site only a couple here. But then before going any\nfurther; \u2018isn\u2019t there a degree of foolishness attached to all extreme types of\nadventure and sport, anyway?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poking one\u2019s head into\nthe cavernous mouth lined with razor-sharp, sawtooth-like dental armour of a\nfifteen-foot alligator is one, for example. This present-day descendant of\nthe dinosaurs that roamed the earth millions of years ago, is said to have only\na tiny brain even after all those eons that have passed by, and it\u2019s more like\na chancy game of Russian roulette, when or whether the creature decides to shut\nits snout with a human neck inside it for chewing at leisure.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then we have some,\nwho, adequately emboldened by alcohol and apparently empowered by those \u2018Ali\nmanthara\u2019 dare challenge a wild elephant that is peacefully chomping away on a\nleafy branch in a patch of jungle. In spite of being called gentle giants and\nquite correctly so, they too like us the humans don\u2019t take it lightly, when\nsomeone tries to invade their personal space. And unfortunately, those who\ndared to do so, didn\u2019t live to tell the rest of the tale, as far as I\nknow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, this particular form\nof adventure could be more or less limited and quite unique to, Sri Lanka only.\n And then I am not sure whether this kind of sheer stupidity should be\ncalled an adventure at all, other than that it is plain suicide. However,\naccording to the \u2018Oxford English Dictionary\u2019 an adventure is; \u2018An unusual and\nexciting or daring experience, Excitement associated with danger or taking of\nrisks, A reckless or potentially hazardous action or enterprise\u2019 etc. So, it,\nnevertheless, is adventure too, of some kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, engaging in true\nadventure is no doubt challenging and once accomplished, can be very\nexhilarating too. To the person, who wins in the end beating all odds, I am\nsure it brings a great sense of achievement and fulfillment, a magical\nsensation of unburdening a weight that he\/she had carried so long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And before I leave, must\nI say for myself that I am somewhere in the middle of that scale or should I\nhonestly admit that actually it is now far more to the left than to the right?\nYes. Years have taken their toll and they did teach me a few lessons too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now this brief article\nwouldn\u2019t be complete without a mention of a very special kind of an adventure,\nwhich is the political adventure. And particularly, in our land like no other,\nit is one adventure that still guarantees a victory in the end, if not glory.\nIsn\u2019t a hefty pension after just five years of idling in Diyawanna environs\nalong with ample real estate and other forms of wealth acquired and accumulated\nduring that state-paid vacation, enough, whether one wins or loses, at the end\nof one\u2019s adventurous tenure, so to speak?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laksiri Warnakula<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula Attempts to conquer heights, be it a mountain or any other carry their own perils and risks. Generally, glory and peril walk side by side in such endeavors, until the former or the latter wins, in the end\u201d. Already eleven or twelve climbers have perished on the slopes of the Mount Everest, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laksiri-warnakula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}