Taming My Ego and Braggadocio

Being brought up in a joint family, I’d grown up listening to, among other things, some amount of bragging from my uncles, aunts and older cousins about the virtues and valour of our people. Visiting relatives coming from different parts of India also contributed to the repertoire of heroics of our people. In fairness I must say there was a lot of stress on values, education, spirituality, etc. in our upbringing but to my mind the bragging was more appealing. No wonder, by the time I was a teen, I’d formed a baseless but a firm opinion that we were a breed apart in every respect without realising that such hot air would be part of every family.

I had started looking at others with this mindset. I classified people into three categories—people who are superior to me, those at par with me and those who are inferior. Naturally, there were very few in the first two categories and people mostly fell into the third category. I also formulated a code of conduct. I will greet people superior to me and nod at my equals.

In the proper order of things, the rest of the people, I thought, should first greet me when we come across each other, upon which I would condescendingly reciprocate the gesture.

To my utter shock and disbelief I found that nobody, not even a mongrel, bothered about me, let alone greet me. I felt very angry that my very legitimate wish had no takers and the world is so unmindful of the hierarchy it should observe.  I went around in helpless anger and anguish.

I must have lived with this problem for two or three years when I saw a CPM legislator, Comrade P G Purushothaman Pillai, in action.

I thought people would be saluting him, since he was an MLA, with reverence the moment he was spotted. On the contrary, what I found was that he extended a warm salute to anyone gazing at him without ever bothering if he was greeted or not. From the body language it was very clear that the salute was not a show to hoodwink anyone, but a genuine, spontaneous one.

He was a scholarly person and I found that he was well liked and respected. His behaviour was just the opposite of what I had in my mind but he commanded respect while nobody bothered about me.

This was a big revelation and I realised my folly. A drastic change in my mindset and approach happened overnight and I can say without any hesitation that I started emulating comrade Pillai. The change in my approach brought about a big difference in the people I came into contact. To my happiness, I found that people started greeting me warmly. Since then, I have followed this behaviour and it made me at peace with the world on this aspect.

All these happened almost half a century ago and ruminating about it all gives many insights.  I hadn’t gone anywhere near comrade Pillai, not uttered a word to him ever, but had seen him only from a distance. Observing his conduct from far transformed me to my great advantage.