Rise & Fall!

Many years ago, after a delicious meal, at the Saffron ( The Park Hotel, Kolkata , while strolling down the street, I chanced upon a book called the 'The Great Indian Story', being sold by a book seller on the pavement.

The book, looked fairly interesting, though by an unheard of author and I ended up buying it & carrying it back on board. The author Shashi Tharoor, wrote amazingly well. He had married current Indian politics with the Mahabharata, with characters being interposed, to produce an enthralling account of Indian politics.......

Post this I kept track of Tharoor's progress and was heartened to see him running for the UN Sec.Gen's position, which he eventually lost to Ban Ki Moon. Tharoor then surfaced as Minister of State, as part of the Congress bandwagon & a staunch ally of PM Manmohan Singh.

I think it was here that Tharoor got carried away & landed himself in one imbroglio after another before being eventually pulled down by Lalit Modi & the IPL. His life & times thus far resembles a Shakepearn tragedy, in the truest sense. A young cock, in all his splendour, with a powerful mentor, being culled down at his moment of glory with his mentor watching helplessly. What a story!

The greater tragedy is that Tharoor with all his intellectual prowess forgot that,the politics of the powerful is ruthless and relentless. He forgot that as a lateral entrant, his progress was watched with growing dismay and anger by many of his fellow politicos..........He forgot that, he did not have the experience or the chutzpah to deal with the politics in Government circles.

I believe that Tharoor was a narcissist. I use the term rather gingerly because I like the man too much.Supremely talented, very articulate, handsome...the list was endless. His strengths became his weaknesses & he paid the price for being situationally unaware and being intensely self absorbed.He was not incompetent, but was naive in a corrupt system which is a veritable snakes pit.

I think there is a lesson in Tharoor's story for all of us in the Corporate World, as well.......................that is if you value your job!

Narcissists fascinate me, so here is an aside!

Despite tending to be exhibitionistic, it is very rare to hear a narcissist brag or boast. Instead, he (or she) tends to 'drop' information in the form of an ostensibly ordinary matter-of-fact report, which appears to be intended to elicit admiration without asking for it. For example, rather than say, "I was so please to meet our CEO, Peter Smith", he will casually allude to "...lunch with Peter", in a way that induces a sense of distance and inferiority in the recipient of the information; again maintaining his sense of grandiosity.

Human's are indeed amazing!