KIA practises the philosophy of self-adulation to perfection. But no doctrine of self-importance can survive without external validation, and that, in turn, requires captive audiences. KIA is fortunate on this count. Given his leadership position, he can always summon a meeting and be assured of an indulgent audience. He can also stop employees in corridors and buttonhole them about his greatness – stories often laced with epic adventures such as grabbing a quick bite well past lunchtime, heroically enduring the delay, and returning home late in the evening after a day-long quest for the “holy grail.” Preaching a me-first doctrine requires the self-assurance of a Don Quixote, the self-righteousness of a Malvolio, and the intelligence of Paramanandayya’s sishyulu. KIA possesses these qualities in generous measure.
“I couldn’t go home for lunch today,” KIA said to me when I met him a few days ago.
I didn’t ask him why. I knew that a long tale about this great event lay in wait like an ambush, ready to spring. But the guns did not fire at once. There was a long reflective pause – something uncharacteristic of KIA. I dropped my defences and began to relax when he ruefully shook his head and said, “Yet another hectic day!”
“Oh really!” I said, almost involuntarily – and instantly regretted it. It was a foolish breach, enough for KIA to charge through with a familiar tale, narrated in vague but portentous terms, about how busy he had been.
His monotonous intoning was suddenly overlaid by a deep rumble as a Bandar-bound train approached the crossing, sounding two long blasts. The chugging slowly faded, and silence returned. KIA droned on, unmindful of the interruption. Somewhere a mobile phone rang. On the road behind us, a car screeched to a halt and a dog let out a series of howls. Someone cursed in Telugu. Nothing disturbed KIA. He was a picture of dedication. Lost in his self-promoting tapas, he was oblivious to all competing noises.
“So, I asked my wife to pack it and send it here, and she did so,” he concluded, a self-satisfied smile spreading across his face. Then, as though recalling an important detail, he added a rounding-off statement: “When I finished eating, it was quarter past two.”
My instincts urged caution; another boast was brewing. "Isn’t it time for the meeting?" I cut in. "It’s ten to three. Let’s go."
I stood and marched towards the door. If KIA was rattled by the abrupt exit, he didn’t show it. We had scarcely cleared the threshold, however, when he launched into a new saga of self-importance.
"I have completed thirty-two NPTEL courses," he said, craning his neck to force eye contact.
I ignored the expectant look and walked on. This line of defence proved no better than the first. The NPTEL narrative continued but did not conclude; it had interwoven storylines and a non-linear progression. KIA promised to tell me the rest after the scheduled event.
KIA started the meeting. His speech was concise and respectful of the audience’s time. He retold the NPTEL story just once, taking no more than five minutes, and made only a passing reference to his delayed lunch, sparing the audience details such as the phone call to his wife and the meal arriving from home. Without much ado, he announced me as the guest speaker, invited me to speak, and stepped down.
When I finished, he was back on the podium—and, sure enough, back on that familiar NPTEL-refrain. Time was now available in plenty; the scheduled event was over. It now dawned on me that my guest lecture had merely been a pretext. Self-promotion, I realised, was the de facto agenda.
Let me end this vignette on a reflective note. How do vainglorious bores rise to positions in which leadership skills ostensibly matter?
The question is best answered anecdotally rather than in black-and-white terms. In the television series, Maharani, streaming on SonyLIV, Gauri Shankar Pandey—a degenerate politician as adept at bootlicking as he is at bullying—is reincarnated as the Governor of Bihar after successfully engineering a series of diabolical intrigues.
In the final scene of Season 4, he makes a dramatic entrance at the Raj Bhavan in a chauffeured black Mercedes-Benz. Equally at ease in a Bandhgala suit as he once was in a haphazardly wrapped dhoti, he saunters in, seats himself majestically in an ornate push-back chair, and casts a supercilious glance at Navin Kumar, Prem Kumar Chaubey’s confidant, before curtly rejecting his plea for Chaubey’s release.
“You will meet the fate of Bhima Bharti,” a furious Navin Kumar warns him. Pandey’s response is telling: “Even if the whole world is destroyed in a nuclear blast, there will be a cockroach deep down in the rubble.” With a fiery gaze blazing from beneath luxuriantly tousled eyebrows, he tears up the appeal, flings the pieces at Navin Kumar, and declares, “I am that cockroach.”
Like Pandey’s cockroach, the KIAs of the world are the ultimate survivors, thriving in the rubble of corporate or academic boredom.
