I loved the first two Kung Fu Panda movies and went prepared to love the third part. My love was not dashed. I felt the same delight I’d felt after the first and second movie. The only difference was that I finally understood why I love Po. This is a panda that doesn’t take himself too seriously. (Is there a panda who takes himself seriously?) He loves kung fu and is obsessed with it but his obsessions don’t involve having a granite visage and proclaiming, “I am Dragon Warrior, grr.” He loves Kung fu but is not reciting his CV (I am the Dragon Warrior. In 2008, I destroyed Tai Lung The Leopard. In 2011, I got rid of Lord Shen The Peacock) the moment you meet him, a danger I would never really worried about until recently.

A while ago I used to occasionally meet people who told me the precise order that they went to the precise prestigious university. Nowadays I meet lots of people who tell me about the number of views on their TEDx talks. I have roughly the same reaction — a desire to shuffle sideways out of the room while simultaneously telling an ant-and-elephant joke. No, let me tell the truth. What I actually do is shuffle sideways and tell an embarrassing story about myself. Once when introduced to a table full of high-powered young people who wanted to know where I planned to do my PhD, I said that I’d just about got my Master’s degree only because the faculty couldn’t face another year of having me. One of those high-powered young people said, “We are not interested in hearing about your failures.” He was very young and still spoke the truth. Nowadays he’d let his eyes glaze over and, to quote the Panda, say, ‘skadoosh!’

All around are people elevator-pitching their life and there’s no time for self-deprecating humour in elevator pitches. You can talk about how you went to scuba dive school and the beauty of the sea and the meditation of the dive, but not that for all but one dive you were utterly nauseous and cursing your best friend who came up with this stupid scheme.

Pandas and other self-deprecators are okay with being snubbed for their dumb jokes. Here is what is truly the worst fate. Someone taking you literally and believing that you are a loser when you were telling your best comic story to break the social ice (which, now that you think of it, would have responded better to a sledgehammer. Or a CV.) Or when you tell someone, “That’s such an amazing achievement! I don’t think I’d have the discipline,” and their lips curl. Don’t be so literal-minded, high-achiever, you want to say but history is full of literal-minded, high-achievers. And then you giggle because here you are in a hilarious situation, again.

The only thing that keeps me from despair is that I still know a handful of people in similar boats. My friend A is a very smart woman who has cut swathes through the corporate jungle. But, clearly, this is not something she’s dying to tell the world. Instead she will tell you about the other day when she was walking down the street between her brother and a friend, and then slipped out of sight. Because she had fallen down a manhole. Or she will tell you the story of accidentally flashing her colleague a relatively naked photo of herself breastfeeding. She tells the story of how being stuck between her boss and her client makes her feel like the hero of those crime novels, at threat of being turned into chapati by killer hydraulic walls.

I (and am sure, my friend A) have been advised by well-meaning folks to take charge of my comportment to get ahead in life. No giggling, for instance. In my home state Kerala, the most recommended way of expressing your femininity is via what my friend M calls dignikutty . It involves a lot of starch (real and metaphorical), the universal adoption of immovable dupattas and an utterly calm manner in the face of any Tai Lung, Lord Shens or even wannabe Dragon Warriors. It makes me flinch as much as the thought of Chinese foot-binding does.

It’s very hard not to feel in the face of the impeccable and the well-groomed that you are utterly wrong, not just about yourself but also about everything that you have worked for and obsessed about. Wouldn’t you trust someone who seems utterly sure of themselves over someone who giggles? My old talisman used to be the memory of Will Smith’s character being interviewed for a position in the secret agency MIB. When another candidate is asked what he thought they were being interviewed for, he responds: We’re here because you are looking for the best of the best of the best. The man who is to become Agent Jay knows, of course, that his slick fellow candidate is clueless. Only with better deportment. And tailored pants.

I have a new talisman in the fat panda who is grateful to discover that he is not eating to his full potential. I remind myself (to wholly make up a Po quote) that it’s okay if my chi is someone else’s chee-chee .

Nisha Susan is a writer and editor of the feminist website The Ladies Finger (@chasingiamb)

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