ELEPHANTS AND THE ROPE
Suri was a sweet boy and a wildlife lover. He was fond of elephants, the mammoth animals. In fact he was very crazy about elephants. However, he never had a chance to see real elephants. All he saw those mammoth creatures were only in television and computers. He lived in a small town. The place he lived didn’t provide him a chance to visit the elephants. All his only desire was to see and touch at least an elephant before he die. Fortunately, when he was 25 years he got a chance to join a crew of wildlife lovers.
He enquired them about their plans and with eagerness, he asked whether they would take him to see the elephants. And they said yes.
The journey happily began and they visited various places. Suri was so happy and enjoyed the tour to the core. He was waiting for years to visit the elephants in real life and the day came.
As they passed through the forests, they walked past a beautiful village. One from the team said that the village had more than 100 elephants and Suri could enjoy the entire day in that village. There was nothing in the world that could measure Suri’s happiness hearing those words.
Finally he saw those elephants for the first time in his life. He was amazed to see the elephants and screamed happily.
After spending two to three hours just seeing the elephants, he was shocked to see those elephants tied to a frail fence. It was a thin rope, not even a chain and there was no cage or any kind of shelter where the elephants lived. Instead, there were simple sheds without any doors.
Suri was surprised as he knew the strength of elephants and saw them tied to strong chains in the television. He enquired one of the countrymen about why they were left freely without any protection and also asked ‘won’t they easily break the rope?’
The trainer answered Suri, ‘They won’t’
Suri was surprised and asked how?
The trainer replied, ‘They were trained here since their childhood. When they were babies we used to tie them with a strong rope and the kid elephants weren’t able to break them. The rope or chain we used to tie them when they were small. It was strong enough to hold them. A few elephants would try to break the rope or chain, but could not set them free. So as they grew, they developed a false belief that the small and thin ropes were too strong for them to break and they continued to get tied by their belief!’
Suri was amazed as well as shocked. The powerful mammoth wasn’t strong enough mentally to get them free from a thin rope.
However, he left the place as he was happy to see the elephants.