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.
.....To be Continued.
Image from here.
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