The Soul of the Rhino (1 of 2 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
The Soul of the Rhino by Hemanta R. Mishra. Copyright 2008 by Hemanta Mishra.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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THE SOUL OF THE RHINO
A Nepali Adventure with Kings and Elephant Drivers, Billionaires and Bureaucrats, Shamans and Scientists and the Indian Rhinoceros

Hemanta R. Mishra
with Jim Ottaway, Jr.
with forewords by Bruce Babbitt and Jim Fowler


DEDICATION
http://www.dailylit.com/books/soul-of-the-rhino/dedication

FOREWORD by Bruce Babbitt
http://www.dailylit.com/books/soul-of-the-rhino/foreword1

FOREWORD by Jim Fowler
http://www.dailylit.com/books/soul-of-the-rhino/foreword2

PREFACE
http://www.dailylit.com/books/soul-of-the-rhino/preface


PROLOGUE:

A TRYST WITH DESTINY

"What have you done, my son!" were the last words mumbled by the bespectacled God-King before he died on the dining table at a family dinner at the Narayanhiti Royal Palace in Kathmandu on June 1, 2001.

The death of King Birendra, a gentle, humble, Harvard-educated monarch was not an act of God. It resulted from a bizarre bloodbath unprecedented in the history of monarchy. In an all-in-one bloody mayhem of patricide, matricide, fratricide, and regicide, Crown Prince Dipendra massacred his whole family and then committed suicide to prove his love of a woman that his parents did not want him to marry. The carnage in Kathmandu sealed the life of a mortal monarch who is regarded, even today, to be the reincarnation of God Vishnu the Protector. It also changed the destiny of Nepal, my motherland, and with it, perhaps, the fate of the rhino--a thick-skinned unicorn that I have loved and venerated for three decades.

What a death for a gentle and humble monarch revered by his people. What a destiny for a mortal who is regarded by his people as immortal. What a fate for a nature-loving ruler who had the courage and the political will to bring the rhinoceros back from the brink of extinction.

It was the court of King Birendra that cemented my fate with the world of the rhinoceros in 1972. Back then, I was invited to serve on the Royal Palace Wildlife Committee, a body that made virtually all policy and operational decisions on wildlife conservation in Nepal. King Birendra also assigned Prince Gyanendra, his younger brother, to chair this committee.

As a native Nepali and a practitioner of its strange Hindu-Buddhist mix of religion, I believe in fate. It was my fate that lured me to the world of the greater one-horned rhinoceros in Nepal's Royal Chitwan National Park almost three decades before the carnage in the Royal Palace in Kathmandu.

Fate has offered me a glimpse into the soul of the rhinoceros, a mystical beast legendary for its power, its sexual energy, its unpredictable temperament, and its prodigious strength. It has led me to observe rhinos from the backs of elephants and from helicopters, to participate in a royal rhino-hunt ritual that dates back to the sixteenth century, to capture baby rhinos for American zoos, to celebrate rhinos in hours of film and hundreds of still photos, and to save rhinos from becoming the innocent victims of skullduggery and political violence.

Juggling the diverse philosophies of East and West, I have tried to find a balance between my spiritual beliefs and rigid Eastern superstitions and my scientific knowledge and Western education. I have attempted to create an entirely new vision of wildlife management, one that balances scientific exactitude, spiritual values, and practical politics.

Wandering along my predestined path, I have faced many questions: What are the bonds that hold a rhino family together? How does Western science affect Eastern rituals pertaining to this animal? Where should the line be drawn between commerce and conservation? How do the royal monarchs of the East differ from the business moguls of the West? What is more valuable: a human life or the life of a rhino? My questions have taken me from my own humble beginnings in the ancient capital city of Kathmandu to the jungles of southern Nepal to the highlands and islands of Scotland. They have also taken me to a pilgrimage of the mind at the bubbling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park and to Main Street in Fort Worth, Texas; from kowtowing to the officious whimsy of the rich and famous to hobnobbing with monarchs from Asia and Europe and billionaires from America.

Over the years the rhino has been transformed into something more than a strange and wonderful beast to me. It has become a talisman, an enigmatic creature suffused with magical force. Ugly yet enchanting. Massive yet delicate. Terrifying yet timid. Holy and revered for its mystical powers, yet a destroyer of farmlands and the farmers that it gores every year.

The rhino is a mixture of contradictions. In these contradictions, perhaps, is the secret to a healthy coexistence between human and beast.

Celebrated in myth, story, and song and slaughtered by poachers in search of its psychotherapeutic powers, the Asian rhino survives today in its greatest numbers in the Terai, the jungle area along the southern border of the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. It was there that I trained myself in the Western sciences and Eastern shamanism and learned lessons from elephant drivers, peasants, and poets; holy men, hunters, and soldiers; moguls, monarchs, and mindless bureaucrats.

This is my story of the search for the soul of the greater one-horned Asian rhinoceros, a prehistoric Asian unicorn that still mystifies modern man.

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