Kiran's Tryst with Ego

 Preamble: During Blogchatter's A2Z challenge during the month of April 2024, I am writing mini stories on various subjects and characters on each day of the month except on Sundays. The name of the protagonist shall begin with the alphabet assigned for the day.  

Kiran Kumar worked for over 35 years in the corporate. During his long innings he managed to climb the ladder and reach the position of manager two years prior to his retirement. Kiran always felt that his work life could have been a lot better if  there were fewer people with large egos in the form of bosses , peers, suppliers or customers. 

Kiran particularly talks about a colleague Kalyan. They had  both joined the company together. Although Kalyan got faster promotions, he did not let that get in the way of his friendships or relationships across departments. Therefore everyone had a good word about Kalyan, the ever smiling yet persuasive officer who got work done without being autocratic or egoistic. 

Kiran says this nature continued till Kalyan was senior manager. Then one fine day, he got promoted as Assistant General Manager. No one knows why? Perhaps some jinx in the designation. Kalyan began to get egoistic, argumentative, find faults easily- A far cry from the genial personality that they had all loved so much. In fact many refused to believe such drastic change in personality, particularly those who did not have much interaction with Kalyan  after his donning the new role and designation. However, Kiran could vouch for the change in Kalyan. 

As destiny would have it, Kiran's tryst with ego came much later after his retirement. As a person who was very interested in writing and in literary matters, Kiran joined a what's app group for those with similar interests. Admin would give them two subjects or topics to write on in a week. Members would then share their unique and interesting perspectives to which others could comment. 

The number of members increased during the Covid 19 period when people were tied down to their houses and were looking for ways to occupy and keep themselves busy. Being an active participant, members voted for Kiran to be the chief admin in place of the earlier incumbent who quit due to reasons of health. The procedure followed for notifying the topics was to seek suggestions from members with the final decision being that of the chief admin for selecting the two topics for the week. 

After a couple of weeks in the role of chief Admin, Kiran began to ignore the suggestions given by members and notified his own topics. Although most of the members were silent, a couple of them were annoyed and expressed themselves. Some hard words were exchanged including on competency level of people to even choose the topics. Things then began to happen very fast. Not only did the two who first raised the protest, but also 3 more members left the group. Immediately the 'silent' members swung into action and began praising Kiran Kumar. Some said he was the epitome of quality literature and that they would abide by his decisions. 

It was at this stage that Kiran introspected on the entire episode and revisited his understanding of the term "Ego". He came to the conclusion that he had behaved in the same egotistic manner during the recent weeks of which he had been complaining whole through his work life. A quick decision was taken to correct and make amends. Now, Kiran thinks twice, many times before passing judgements on anyone.

 "We know how prone we are to something only when we are exposed to it ourselves or in close proximity to it." tells Kiran these days to anyone and everyone who cares to listen to his story. 

NB: This post is a part of  challenge #BlogchatterA2Z