One never puts thought while forwarding junk mail to friends and acquaintances – it happens by habit.
Yesterday, I sent this to Ibel, my office colleague-
As I was passing the elephants, I suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.
I saw a trainer near by and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. “Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away.
They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.” I was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.
Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?
True …Right???
And her reply was:
Good one. But there is something else that I learnt from this passage.
Just a thought went through my mind, is training a little child when he / she is young. When you bond the child in the right values in their childhood, they will find it difficult to deviate or break from it when they are old enough (though they can break it). It makes it so much important for parents to be able to tie them to the right values when they are very young. Like the older elephants, they are conditioned to believe that they cannot break it very easily.
I am thinking on a different line than the moral of the passage given below. Thanks for the mail. It was nice to read it.
No wonder we (Indians in particular) judge a person by the family he/she comes from. It may be possible to change some behaviors in adult life, but the values inculcated during childhood prevail.
Thanks to my friend Giri’s rejuvenated interest in cycling and his enthusiastic plans to travel to nearby places, the dormant cycling monster in me awoke today. We left at 5:30 am – Giri was on his chic new sports bike BSA Mach Racer, and I was on my mature (wouldn’t call it old) Hamilton. He was enthusiastic about a trip to Haji Malang (Malangad), a good 18 km away – which amused me slightly because I was riding a bike after ages and was not sure of my stamina.
We returned in 4 hours – successfully. It was a refreshing but a very exhausting trip. Weather was pleasant – and being a Sunday, it is a “free” day today. No worries.
- – -
Since you are reading this, I’d suggest you could also read travelogue about my bicycle expedition from Goa to Mumbai.
Here is the link
Piercing thru’ the dark
Hot knife in a butter block
Travels a ray of light
tho’ nothing else is in sight.
I’m starting with Isaac Asimov’s “The big and the little”. What picture would have been better suited to this occasion? This picture was taken on a pitch dark road with long camera exposure so that the tail lights of ascending vehicles left a trail of their presence.
I’m scattering few pictures taken at Karjat station on 31-Dec-05, where I could play with shutter speeds and achieve these amateurish but nevertheless interesting pictures.
What may seem to be a tiny droplet of rain to you and me could in fact be a giant lake for an ant. Incriminating!, may some declare if they see you wearing ‘short’ skirts. Perhaps the world will perpetually argue the case of a terrorist and a freedom fighter.
Most of our judgments are based on relative definitions. In the absence of measured characterization, one seems to compare behaviors based on the examples of self proclaiming liberalists, the reddest of the communists or the most ruthless authoritarian laws. The understanding of the extent of goodness or badness of any event therefore is subject to limitless deviation. Of course, when I say ‘deviation’, again I am expecting something different from what I believe is right.
So pardon me (at the risk of sounding like a saint) when I say that most of us humans are trapped inside the barriers that we created around ourselves. Should we allow these confined souls sufficient space to wander wildly before arriving at a verdict?
At the same time, isn’t it true that this is what makes us unique individuals?
I went hiking to [tag]Peth[/tag] fort yesterday with my school friends (Aniket, Amod, Kapil, Devendra). We started from Dombivli by the 01:59 Karjat train (last suburban local) and reached [tag]Karjat[/tag] station at 03:35. After spending a couple of hours at Karjat station, we went by local transport to Ambivli village, approximately 25 km away. Returned on the same day at 21:00.
→ Details of Peth
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