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.
