Easy does it The bard seems to have written one of his oft-quoted lines - the one that clubs people with greatness - keeping India's chief election commissioners in mind. T.N. Seshan, the man whose middle name was megalomania, would have said that he was among the few who were born great. His successor, M.S. Gill, a mild-mannered man who became some sort of a celebrity somewhere down the line, managed to achieve greatness as he went along. But James Michael Lyngdoh - the man who now occupies the seat - clearly has greatness thrust upon him. And he doesn't seem to be very happy about it. These days, Lyngdoh's appointment book looks something like a busy politician's engagement diary. Every day, scores of people are ushered into his spacious conference room at Nirvachan Sadan - the New Delhi office of the Election Commission. Plates of cashew nuts and badaam barfis do the rounds, while the delegates - some of whom have come to voice their support for elections in Gujarat and some their apprehensions - speak their minds. Most of the time, Lyngdoh, a low-profile retired bureaucrat if there was ever one, just listens. Flanked by the other two members of the commission - T.S. Krishnamurthy and B.B. Tandon - and four EC officials, Lyngdoh sits patiently through every deposition. 'He does not appear to be a man in a hurry,' says political scientist Zoya Hassan, who called on him on Thursday with a delegation that urged him not to cede the Gujarat chief minister's call for an early poll. 'And when he listens to you, you get the feeling that he is seriously hearing you out,' says actress-activist Sharmila Tagore, who was in the delegation as well. In the last few days, several people have called on Lyngdoh to air their views on the polls. Former Prime Minister Inder Gujral was there last week with human rights activists Rajinder Sachar and George Verghese. Harkishan Singh Surjeet, H.D. Deve Gowda and Sitaram Yechury met him on Thursday. As did a SAHMAT team - comprising Hasan, Tagore, economist Prabhat Patnaik, activist Rajen Prasad, artist Vivan Sundaram and designer Parthiv Shah. The SAHMAT group seemed rather overawed by its meeting with Lyngdoh. Said Tagore: 'I found him very correct. He doesn't say much, but his his body language tells you that he is a man who is not going to take a hasty decision.' That Lyngdoh is not a man in a hurry is apparent. Nearly ten days after Narendra Modi dissolved the state assembly and called for early polls, the Election Commission is still to announce its decision on when the polls will be held. Seshan would have risen to the occasion and said a few provocative things. Gill would have smiled pleasantly and said something wise. But Lyngdoh, an EC whose face few would know outside the Election Commission, sits in his room and confabulates. There is also some talk that the EC may tour Gujarat for a first-hand report of the situation there. Despite the silence that engulfs the EC, his own views on the subject - though not reiterated in recent days - are known. Just a few days before the Gujarat assembly was dissolved, Lyngdoh had made it clear that he was not in favour of early polls in a state that reeled under a wave of violence for over three months. 'It's a few mad people who keep talking about it [election], so why should we bother?' Lyngdoh had said. That was uncharacteristically blunt for a man who is known to keep in the shadows. But, says a friend, Lyngdoh is also known for his very strong views. 'He is a very, very strong person,' the friend - speaking on the condition of anonymity - says. 'I find it amazing that he rose to become a secretary in the government despite his absolute no-nonsense attitude.' Read between the lines, it means that Lyngdoh does not buckle under pressure - political or otherwise. Apparently, when Deve Gowda was the Prime Minister, he tried to make Lyngdoh his cabinet secretary. Lyngdoh, the story goes, wouldn't hear of it. 'He is a man who goes by the rule-book,' says an associate. 'He wouldn't take up the post because he couldn't think of superseding T.S.R. Subramaniam who was senior to him.' Subramaniam went on to become the cabinet secretary. And Lyngdoh went on to become something like a folk hero in the corridors of power. The mark that he left was on his files. Apparently, his markings on files were so sharp that successive generations of bureaucrat used to go through them just to pick up a tip or two on how to deal with politicians. Surprisingly, the bureaucrat of the 1961 batch of the Bihar cadre - a former secretary (coordination) in the Cabinet Secretariat - has had a quiet innings in government. In fact, many of his contemporaries were surprised when Lyngdoh joined the Election Commission in 1997. There is a story - possibly apocryphal - about this as well. Apparently Purno Sangma, the former Lok Sabha speaker and a Garo tribesman from Meghalaya, was concerned when he heard, some five years ago, that another Meghalaya politician, G.G. Swell, but of the rival Khasi tribe, was about to join Deve Gowda's cabinet. That was when Sangma told Deve Gowda that he would give the government an even better Khasi and proposed Lyngdoh's name as an EC member. Deve Gowda, whose government depended heavily on Sangma's good offices, agreed. And that was how Lyngdoh came to the Centre. Few had then heard of the man, and not many know of him today either. His friends say that he is exceptionally intelligent and fond of reading. He comes from a well-known family of Meghalaya and his grandfather was a reputed Khasi writer. Lyngdoh speaks several languages - French like the French, German like the Germans and Hindi like a Bihari. But despite a strong tendency to remain in the wings, Lyngdoh has begun to emerge as a someone who is different. The SAHMAT group got a glimpse of that in his office the other day. Though his room had a hundred people waiting outside to see Tagore, the man himself seemed more excited by his encounter with Patnaik. 'I have read your works,' Lyngdoh told the economist. 'I didn't realise that the Prabhat Patnaik who was coming to meet me was the same,' he said. For the next several months, the spotlight will be on Lyngdoh. But the man who practises karate in his backyard is clearly not going to wilt under the arclights. 'He is a zero tolerance man,' says his friend. 'He is not going to get influenced by anybody; he'll do what he thinks is the best.' Amen.