The Rhino principle

There is a certain rule in life that I just thought is worth considering. If particularly applies when you are confronted by a crisis. And I would love to call it the Rhino principle.

Wait wait, before you leave. I know the rhino is not particularly sensible or clever animal! It is perhaps last of quadrupeds to carry a great weight of body amour. And by rules of progressive design and the process of natural selection and progressive design the rhino ought to have been eliminated. But it hasn't been. Why not?

The reason prehaps lies in one aspect of rhino - it is single-minded. When it perceives an object the rhino takes a decision - to charge. And it puts everything its got into the charge. When the charge is over, the object is either flattened or has gone a long way into cover, whereupon the rhino instantly resumes browsing.

Few people think of learning from a rhino. But I think I do. Or will try harder for it. Whenever I think of a task that can not be finished, or a start can not be made I will write in bold " Stop fussing about the job, just charge it. Keep on charging until it is finished. That's what the rhino does. Put this over the desk and remember the Rhino principle". I have tried this more than once. (Even in writing this). The rhino principle may not produce the perfect result, but it produces a result. It
produced an initial of this article. And once the draft was ready, I could improve and polish and bring it to a level of reasonable satisfaction. But ignore the rhino and even the initial is not produced.

Now there are other areas to which the principle can be applied, particularly politics and statesmanship. The monumental story of Chanakya is an exposition of this principle. Even in recent history of India this principle just sublimes. When Gandhi saw an object- the British, he just took the charge. And the nation just rallied behind him. And he kept on bulldozing the British till he succeeded. Even Jinnah, perhaps unfortunately was a living example of a rhino principle. Never perhaps in history did one man created a nation.

Now thinking of our present leadership. Is it cast in the same mold. I am afraid not. Be it congress, be it BJP (others are non existent) the spirit to take charge, the spirit to relentlessly pursue an aim is missing. The aim might be wrong, or it may be right but there has to be a spirit to follow it. Which perhaps is something our leaders’ lack. And may be this is what the nation lacks. More than the goal, we need leaders with spirit. We need leaders with less “niti” (policy) and more “neeyat” (spirit).

And there is another area in which the principle just bamboozles. Our lives. Moving to our personal lives we can go choose to lead our quiet lives and get through them without achieving much. But if we want to do the big thing, if we hope to leave the mark that will be admired and remembered, we will have to learn to distinguish between the peripheral and the essential. Then, having clearly established our central objective, we must charge it again and again until the goal is achieved.

That is the way the rhinoceros does. It may not be a model animal in most ways. But one thing it does very well. And that one thing we can learn. Charge!!!