Saturday, April 5, 2014

Gurbhim's Chair - IV - Little Light on Chacha Sehru

Gurbhim's Chair - A Short Story Series

Gurbhim's Chair - IV

"Little Light on Chacha Sehru"


Gurbhim, with his wings, was going to meet Chacha Sehru, the foremost Metallist in the city of Kejristan. He sported a beard that curved perfectly from ear to ear like a waning moon semi-circling around his jaw. He had forged himself a strong reputation as a Metallist and an equally strong dislike for anything to do with alchemy, which he believed to be nothing more than imaginary short-cuts. The difference between Metallism and Alchemy, for him, was that Metallism will eventually get things done much earlier than and even before alchemists would even be able to figure out how to quite understand chemical compositions perfectly. His disdain for alchemy was quite popular throughout Chappalpur and no one dared talk, in front of him, about alchemy including even a derogatory joke on it, not because his anger was a repository of commanding obeisance or because he posed the danger of meting out physical harm to the one who ignoringly would speak of alchemy in front of him, but because Chacha Sehru and his well-networked relatives dotted the important business points in Chappalpur. Anyone who wished to get business in the City of Kejristan might eventually have to wind up at any of such important business points standing in the Chappalpur marketplace as sentinels of either supply or demand. These business points had come to be owned, operated or managed by someone connected by family, whether directly or through some intricately formed blood-relation, to Chacha Sehru. Many, who wished to start trading, were perplexed by this state of play which was characterized by ball-play dominated by Chacha Sehru. Trust and confidence in each other used to run low in this city and therefore if you could manage social affirmation of your credentials through Chacha Sehru’s elaborate business family network, chances of you becoming a part of the trader community were significantly boosted. In other words Chacha Sehru had vicariously become the licensing authority of one's credentials to do business in Chappalpur. 

Chacha Sehru, considered himself as a man of integrity, who was unabashed about working tirelessly towards ensuring the primacy of Chappalpur in the whole of Kejristan, even though Chappalpur grew on the outskirts of the City, from nothing but sands and bushes. Chappalpur, for Sehru, was the essential cog in the wheel of life of that city, and it was his unshakeable belief that the robustness of Chappalpur maintained the cyclical advance so cherished by the city’s denizens. For who likes breezes to be still or waves to be stagnant or motion to be dormant? Though there had been occasions of bungling where a pinhead in the family chart of Chacha Sehru, tempted with quick gratification conned consumers or traders here and there; Chacha Sehru’s reputation as the grand old symbol of sensibility and honesty was too strong an adhesive to let his family network’s hold of significant business points be shaken by corruptible propensities. His ethical business practices which were foundationed upon social enrichment were fastidiously protected and propagated by him and his core followers, almost to the point of making Chacha Sehru the face of collective benevolence even though his penchant for unadulterated hatred towards alchemy and intolerance of any mode of thinking unconnected to Metallism made him the dreaded anathema to few families, including that of Sepharim’s.

Due to Chacha Sehru’s unrelenting preaching of Metallism and his consistent displays of practical marvellousness of Metallism’s knowledge, he had come to acquire a stellar pedestal on which he was revered by the business denizens of Chappalpur. Why must, then, he not be selected as the Supreme Leader? a post which Gurbhim had already started dreaming of before he set out with his wings adjunct to his shoulders crunkling with stony resolve. It was because Chacha Sehru’s ideology was not considered sound enough by others in the City of Kejristan, who believed business profits should remain solely for private consumption and enjoyment without its deferment to achieving imagined and abstract values that no one but Chacha Sehru seemed to profess having seen. Businesses even in Chappalpur did not harbor any affinity towards Chacha Sehru’s ideas, though they made every pretense of it, only to ensure continuity of their businesses as the future of the direction in which their economical pursuits would oscillate to much depended on what sentiments different contortions of Chacha Sehru’s facial muscles conveyed. No one could quite understand how well cemented Sehru’s sense of approval or disapproval was in the minds of the trading community even though in reality, any mass economical activity has a life of its own and no one was any the wiser to potentially puncture his business’ survival or growth by displaying nonchalance towards Chacha Sehru’s ideals which were perceived to be the invisible glue circulating through the business arteries of Chappalpur. Chacha Sehru was like the old version of a modern country’s stock exchange whose fluctuations of moods conveyed to traders the nerve of their market. 


Long before the market of Chappalpur had come into existence as a scab crust, a divergent bump, on the smooth skin of life in Kejristan, an adolescent Sehru was very much within the centre of life in Kejristan. Even though Kejristan was populated by mirthful, free-spirited and social people living in it, it was nonetheless colonized by a fatalistic mentality. Everyone lived carefree and happy, not because the city’s residents derived pleasure from life, but because they had come to resign themselves to fate en masse. Toddlers in their playing years were told and instructed diligently that there is nothing to be done about life as life will do to you what it wants. Toddlers learned to grow up terribly pessimistic, disoriented, disillusioned and melancholic. This is what the city as a collective whole desired because when the pangs of all such life-sapping thoughts were thoroughly experienced, all that one would be left with will be pure joy and happiness in merely being able to live and breathe. It was a happy city, but also a city that was at rest and content with itself.  Even after being at the receiving end of treachery, a victim would regale others with the tales of misfortune that befell him because it was now engraved in everyone’s personality to accept everything dealt to oneself with godly fervor. People took pleasure in elaborating on minute details of the connery by which they got cheated and tales ranged from how one was cheated by a more masterful conner than the other story-teller and how the other celebrated his loss of valuables with a jubilant sized tumbler of spirit and how another other after getting swindled learned the art of trickery which would be then implemented by him on some other innocuous person and each of the stories would be met by a raucous crowd that took delight in hearing its own sound of collective laughter. The young Sehru despised its city’s people for this and his distaste for alchemy arose chiefly because he attributed its rise to the mindless philosophical bonhomie prevalent in his city which made its people start tinkering with things they otherwise would not. Alchemy, for him, was hedonistic, a waste of time and resources, a perversion, a non-ideal, and therefore he resolved to push him towards the outer corner of the city to create his own way of life which would be industrious and far away from the hocus-pocus of impotent alchemy.

.....To be Continued.

Image from here.

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