When we were kids, many of us had the idea that being in charge of something, a team, a class, a project meant that you had to shout a lot. Speaking loudly and constantly and then going up a gear into a full-throated roar was, it seemed to us, the true mark of a leader. This was not surprising, because all around us people believed in this method of stentorian command. At home, most parents (or at least one of them) shouted. On the road the driver of the school bus shouted at vehicles lower down the food chain, letting the hand-pulled rickshas, thhelas and taxis have it, using the bus as a battering ram against the traffic to get us to school. In school, teachers shouted a lot, as did the kids put in charge of us other kids, the prefects and monitors. In sport, often the kid who had the loudest voice and most overbearing presence became the captain of this team or that.
Sociology of decibel counts
A friend tried to fly a theory that this was because we grew up in the second and third decades after Independence and a lot of people, insecure in the young nation, felt they wouldn’t be heard and obeyed unless they shouted. Another friend suggested the element of class was involved: labourers working in road gangs or teams transporting heavy goods needed to have the gang-boss shout in order to communicate simple, urgent instructions, but as you moved up the economic ladder the method of management increasingly became softer voiced. These were both good theories and held water up to a point, but then reality melted them down. People continued to shout orders well into the ’80s and ’90s and up to today; and anyone who’s seen a macho corporate boss or advertising firm tyrant do their Michael Douglas impression knows that a fancy business school in America or Europe provides no prophylactic against the bullying Sergeant-Major method, that in fact management Boot Camp in the U.S. might even encourage frequent explosions.
As a boy I was caught up in a variety of my own bubbles and uninterested in any world domination project that involved dealing with other humans. Boys like me were unlikely ever to be put in charge of anything, and that suited me just fine. What I did resent and react to, though, was that other boys actually relished being put in positions of power over the rest of us. They liked to order us about, upon being disobeyed they liked to inflict pain, and most of all they liked to shout commands. A few other boys and I had our heads screwed on differently and we relished getting up the noses of the Sergeant-Major types: we’d comply with orders but dial down the compliance to snail’s pace; the louder the controllers shouted, the more deaf we would become; if we were told to go right, we would go left and take the consequences. This behaviour would drive the prefects/monitors crazy and their fury would boil up into draconian punishments and plain, old sharp violence, which, in turn, would give people like me perverse if badly bruised satisfaction.
The carrying voice
At some point we became the seniors in high school and my friends were suddenly among what I thought of as the student-police. One friend, who was otherwise completely devoid of any control psychopathy (and was an inveterate rule-breaker on the quiet), was also made a monitor. This guy, who I knew really well, developed a technique that I had to admire: he would call out instructions and orders in a carrying voice that expected to be obeyed, but there was no anger or rancour in it. If he met with resistance, he would lay down retaliatory protocols, but again, almost with good humour rather than with anger.
Later on in life, when I entered the world of film-making, I found this attitude and technique come in very handy.
Observing famous directors at work, one noticed that they did no shouting at all, but one word in an assistant’s ear would set off a chain of clearly called out commands. However, if it came to showing who was boss, a small explosion, conducted without raising of voice, was more effective than any screaming fit could have been. More and more as I watched people lead or manage in different situations, I began to see that the most effective ones were those who didn’t lose control or indulge in easily raised voices. Gradually I began to realise that this had to do with both self-respect and a respect for the people to whom you were giving instructions or orders. Shouting down at subalterns continues in our society and it cuts across class and ethnicity; if the foreman of a working gang starts shouting, it means that he is getting worried about his position or his ability to execute the job; if a wealthy, privileged person has a screaming fit at people who are ‘below’ them, it shows the double lack of respect mentioned above.
Hierarchies, both long-term and short-term ones, are impossible to avoid in any society, the question is how you navigate the power equations in which you find yourself. We may have dynamics that are unique to the Indian situation or to various micro-societies in the subcontinent, but the more we learn not to reach for the feudal scream, shout and tantrum tendencies, the better off we will be.
