Hungry For More

While both humility and arrogance involve power, arrogance only contains a semblance of it, a fleeting thing…. It is humility which makes it true and lasting, says Madhu Jain.

- Madhu Jain

Whenever I think of power, the word ‘glory’ pops up, unsummoned. Perhaps, it is the title of Graham Greene’s soul searing novel The Power and the Glory. Perhaps, it is the memory of bullies in school and college who used backbiting and sharp tongues to gather around them acolytes to force the timid to obey their dictates. And, by so doing, prop themselves up and preen in the glory of their power.

Perhaps, it also evokes the power games of colleagues in the various publications I have worked in, where bullies and those-in-a-tearing hurry-to-get-to-the-top intimidate colleagues whom they fear would be an obstacle in their ascent to the pinnacle. They usually do this with the help of a band of groupies and cronies who bask in the glory of the ‘bulliest’ of them all. American popular culture brims over with instances: television series like Gossip Girl and The Office or films like Mean Girls, and the many Harry Potters.

Closer to home, in the countless Hindi films set in colleges and offices, or in the arena of the joint family (between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, between sisters-inlaw and certainly between brothers and cousins), power struggles noisily occupy centre stage. Our epics pointed the way. The Mahabharata has served as a template for hundreds of Hindi films. Kalyug (1981),