bhaskar saikia

What makes humans and elephants so alike?

It’s not our strength, nor our social structures—though both species are known for those. It’s something subtler, more psychological: the ability to remember.

Let’s step into the world of elephant ethology for a moment.

When a baby elephant is born, it experiences something rather unexpected. Before it even learns to stand, its mother—and even other adult elephants—kick it repeatedly. It seems cruel at first glance. But this is no act of hostility; it’s a survival ritual.

In the wild, newborn elephants are vulnerable to predators like lions and tigers. If they can’t rise and run within minutes of birth, they’re easy prey. So the kicks aren’t punishment—they’re practice. Painful, yes, but necessary. The message is simple: Get up. Learn to survive. Quickly.

But what happens when that same baby elephant is captured and brought into captivity?

At first, the little elephant fights the rope or chain used to tether it. It pulls, kicks, struggles. It remembers: struggle is good. Freedom is worth fighting for. But the chain is strong, the tree trunk unyielding, and the young elephant is still weak. No matter how hard it tries, it fails.

Again and again, it tries. And fails. And eventually… it stops trying.

Years pass. The elephant grows. It becomes massive—strong enough now to tear down trees. But it doesn’t know that. Why? Because it remembers its early failure. It still believes that the chain—now the same as it was before—cannot be broken.

And so, a creature mighty enough to uproot a forest stays chained to a twig.

Now pause and reflect.

What stops that elephant from trying again?

It isn’t the strength of the chain.

It’s the memory of defeat. The emotional echo of failure. The belief that trying is pointless. And that, dear reader, is what makes both elephants and humans prisoners of the past.

You see, memory is a double-edged sword. While it allows us to learn, it can also trap us. Because we remember how much something hurt, we fear trying again. We allow one broken moment to define all future attempts.

Think about it:

• A person with a broken heart avoids love, fearing it will break again.
• An entrepreneur who failed once is hesitant to begin again.
• A student who stumbled in an entrance exam fears the next attempt.

We stop assessing situations rationally. Instead, we let emotion cloud our path. We see a flimsy rope and imagine an unbreakable chain. The real shackles are never around our ankles. They’re in our minds.