The idea of a leader

First off, picture this:

Now, here you see there are 9 birds of varying sizes. But we are a pack of 8!

So, I try to label all the birds except the one on the extreme right, it'd go like this: The tallest one in the middle is Ranta popping his inquisitive head to have a beyond-the-horizon look; the one almost hiding and visible only obscurely but quite a link in the chain is Phani; the healthiest one at the back (looking in a eerie direction) is Parivesh; the one about to be the next one to climb with his thoughts carefully composed (notwithstanding cyclones in the inside) is Rocky; behind Rocky is Pushpam, though in the line, will need a shake to move forward for he's in a slumber for there's nothing happening that'd interest him; on the left of Ranta is Madhukar, equidistant from all, permissive, a true cest-la-vie character realizing the difference between things that matter and those that don't; on the right of Ranta is Khare, head drooping in his body like a turtle, perhaps he feels cold, eyes closed but alert as ever; and the one left over can be called me.

So, the eight in the queue are labelled. Who the hell now is the one that leads, almost climbed? Who's this leader of our group? It'd be overly pessimistic and impractical to boast that we don't require a leader: we jolly well do.

Yesterday, we had a heated discussion over a similar issue -- the idea of leadership, the quality of leading and allowing one to lead. We ended up in deadlock, though the lock wasn't strong enough to resist breakage.

But don't we realize that there's no additional person who is the leader? The leader is a combination of us all, in the language of Chemistry, you call it resonance of benzene except that unlike benzene here there are 8 atoms involved. Whenever leadership is required, a collective effort projects and the bird that has almost climed and appears to be the leader is but only a face given to this congregated effort. A leader is one who leads and a follower is one who follows. However, a leader without a followers is same as fish without water -- dead and non-existant. One holds the torch and others gather sight from the light shown by the torch to move ahead; that there is an able leader is important but who is this leader is rather irrelevant. Leadership mushrooms when the need exceeds the efforts so as to give a face and plan and channel to the efforts; the essence and purpose still remains unchanged -- to move ahead, to climb up, as the leader in the pic above, the one-and-all, is.