Man - The Explorer

Captain Scott - Antarctic explorer
In 1901-04 Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) was the first person to explore Antarctica extensively by land. His last mission to the South Pole ended in tragedy and only missed being the first to this famous landmark (compass bearing) by days.

Sir Ernest Shackleton - Antarctic explorer
After Captain Scott died during an attempt to reach the South Pole in 1912, Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) chose to tackle the challenge of Antarctica in a different way. He decided he would attempt to journey across the icy continent from one side to the other via the South Pole.

Captain James Cook
Captain James Cook's achievements in mapping the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia radically changed our understanding of world geography.

Christopher Columbus
What did Columbus want to do? Why did he want to sail west? And what exactly did he find? This dude needs no introduction

Ferdinand Magellan
The first explorer to sail around the world.

Peter the Great, reigned 1682-1725
Tsar Peter I of Russia is more usually described as 'Peter the Great'. As a young man, he travelled to Europe in 1697-8 to study new developments in technology, especially shipbuilding

Sir Francis Drake, 1542-1596
Francis Drake was an experienced and daring seafarer. Among many adventures, the 'famous voyage', his successful circumnavigation of the world between 1577 and 1580 ensured that he would be one of the best remembered figures of Tudor England

Sir John Franklin 1786-1847
Sir JohnFranklin was an officer in the Royal Navy and an Arctic explorer.Although he took part in the great sea battle of Trafalgar, he is best remembered for his surveys of the Arctic.

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Why do I invoke all these very glorious and very dead gentlemen right at the beginning? Because, even though most of the earth has been mapped and charted, we are still living in largely untested terra firma.

Last Sunday, I did not have much to do (extremely rare, since my weekends are busier than my weekdays). So, to kill time, I visited one of the malls at Vashi.

I could see that India has suddenly woken up from decades of fantastic frugality and pitiless penny pinching. Shopping is the new Great Indian sport, cricket can eat dirt; many practice the former, the latter has mostly armchair followers who spew statistics to make uninteresting conversations narcissistically boring.

Yeah, I have refrained from commenting on the state of Indian hockey.

I have been to that mall quite a few times, but this time, I wanted to buy nothing. So, I resorted to observing people, psychology being my pet subject.

I noticed a couple went past me twice within a span of five minutes. They looked involved with something, so I ruled the possibility of either/both of them checking me out. The guy looked purposeful while the girl had an earnest look etched on her face. Third time, when they passed me, I heard the girl say something and the guy snarl at her.

It was getting heated and piqued my curiosity sufficiently to make me follow them, of course, discreetly.

Only then I came to know the fact.

The guy was searching for formal shirts, dragging the girl along with. The girl was beseeching him to ask some attendant where they (the shirts) were kept. The guy, probably guided by the spirits of the very glorious and very dead gentlemen mentioned at the beginning, was determined to chart a new route from the entrance to the shirt rack, unassisted by any attendant.

Eventually he found it. Any animal with a pair of eyes could have noticed the striking similarity in the sense of pride on our guy's face and Magellan's, had the latter survived the circumnavigation and had someone around him clicked his photograph.

The girl, obviously not sharing the same sense of achievement, just rolled her eyes heavenwards.

So, here it is.

Undaunted by the lack of female adulation, scarcity of uncharted Earth and unguided by mall attendants, one genus still thrives.

Homo Exploratorus – Man The Explorer