Who Is This Devil In The Detail?

The idiom—the devil is in the detail—serves to alert us that much as something at face value looks simple, a complication is deeply lodged in therein. Life, as we know it, gets better when we respect the details that form a part of the fundamentals.

Down memory lane, students at the University of Nairobi went on a rampage in the Moi years. A powerful KANU party operative at the time named Kariuki Chotara had heard that the students wanted to dialogue with the government over their problems. He misunderstood 'dialogue' to mean some type of food and went on to advise that if generous servings of dialogue were going to solve the problem, then it was prudent to let the students have dialogue urgently.

The gap between Chorara's understanding of dialogue and the actual meaning is an example of missing the detail by several miles. Could someone have lied to him to humour the president? Or did he promote himself to his point of incompetence as he hadn't attended English grammar classes? Whichever way it appeals, the fact remains that the devil was hidden in the detail.

Elsewhere, another situation unfolded in a high-security zone. The high terrorist threat caused the building's owners to search all users at all entry points. But an unusual murder happened within this building.

A famous man's body was found on the floor with no visible injuries. Autopsy results pointed to his exposure to a lethal poison poured on his clothing by a visibly harmless girl. The CCTV caught her emptying the bottle's contents on the victim's thick trench coat. What was annoying was the fact that food and drinks from outside the building were not allowed through the checkpoints but the duty guards attention was limited to metal detection, given the huge crowds. The devil was in the water and was missed out by a reluctant crew.

In yet another situation, a man was robbed of jewellery at gunpoint. Fortunately, he acted fast and the police mounted a roadblock to canvas for the suspect. On sensing that he would get caught, the thief abandoned his car in the jam and walked into the bushes as if going to relieve himself like the other drivers had done. This bush was known to have deadly reptiles so he acted fast. He stripped naked, smeared dirt all over himself and walked out as a mad man with a dirty box on his head.

This guy walked through the tight security ring as he chanted in madman's language. The devil was in the box. The police pieced together the trick when the abandoned car and eyewitness accounts of the madman came to the fore.

We often look in the wrong places for the things we seek in life, in fact, so much so that the devil in the detail is often overlooked. And at times, we focus on the detail to the exclusion of the whole picture.

A waiter dropped a tray of freshly ordered food because his smitten self missed a step when an innocent beauty walked into the restaurant. Which of them, the devil or the detail did he drop beside the food? I don't know.

Avoid getting distracted unnecessarily for it will cost you big time or those around you. This idiom is serious business.