By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam

I attended a function the other day where the chief guest arrived twenty minutes late and the entire hall rose as though a great wind had passed through it. What struck me was not the man himself but the small army that preceded him. There was someone to carry his folder, someone to hold the door, someone to whisper into his ear and someone whose only visible function was to look busy on his behalf. By the time he reached the dais, I had quite forgotten why we had gathered. The arrangement had become the event.

I have spent a good part of my life among people who held no position at all and I have noticed that they rarely felt the need to announce themselves. The tribal elder in our villages who settled disputes did not arrive  with a folder carrier.

He simply sat under a tree and people came to him. His authority rested on something that could not be displayed because it was not for display. Somewhere along the way I had assumed this was how the world recognised worth. I was, as is often the case, mistaken.

We now live in an age where importance is something you wear rather than something you are. A man is known by the names he can drop into a sentence without warning. He will tell you, apropos of nothing, that he spoke to the Secretary that very morning and he will watch your face to see whether the information has landed with the desired weight. Conversation has become a kind of currency exchange where each party tries to establish a better rate. I have sat through entire dinners that were really auctions, with everyone bidding up their own proximity to power.

The throwing of weight has become an art form of its own. There is the gentleman who cannot enter a government office without reminding the clerk who he knows. There is the lady who arrives at the airport counter with the air of someone whose displeasure could end careers. There is the young executive who copies half the organisation on an e-mail so that his single line of instruction acquires the gravity of a summons. None of these people are exercising power. They are merely renting it and renting it at a poor price.

What amuses me most is the management of optics, which has quietly become a profession. People now plan how they will be seen before they decide what they will do. The photograph is arranged before the work is begun. I know of meetings whose only outcome was a photograph of the meeting. We have reached a point where the appearance of doing has comfortably replaced the doing itself and nobody seems to mind, because everybody is busy arranging their own appearance.

And yet there is a small problem with all this display, one that the display merchants seem never to notice. Power, when it is shown off, begins to leak. Every time you invoke a name, the name loses a little of its value. Every time you throw your weight, the floor gives way a little more. The man who must constantly remind others of his importance is telling us, without meaning to, that his importance is not self evident. Real authority has never needed a public address system. It is the empty vessel that insists on the loudest announcement of its fullness.

I learnt this slowly and I am still learning it. The people I have admired most were those who held power lightly, almost absent mindedly, as though it were a tool they happened to be carrying rather than a crown they were anxious to keep. They understood that power spent on impressing others is power that produces nothing and that power produces more of itself only when it is put to honest use. A reputation for getting things done quietly draws far more authority to a person than any amount of name dropping ever could. The world, in the end, gives weight to those who do not throw it.

There is a further truth that the optics managers will never discover, because it lies on the other side of vanity. Power becomes real only when it is used for someone other than oneself. The authority that serves only its own image is a hollow thing that collapses the moment the cameras leave. But authority used to lift another person, to right a wrong, to open a door for someone who could never repay you, grows steadily and quietly until it no longer needs to be claimed at all.

So, the next time we feel the urge to mention whom we know or to remind a room of our standing, perhaps we might pause and do the harder, quieter thing instead. We might simply help someone and tell no one. We will find, to our surprise, that we have become a little more powerful for having said a little less.

[Dr. R. Balasubramaniam is the Founder of Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM). ‘The Lighter Side’ is a series of satirical articles meant to bring a smile by highlighting the funny side of everyday life.]