Tales from the left

It was a different 8220;Kissa Kursi Ka8221;: Algu Chaudhary and Jumman Sheikh were to experience the charm of the chair by turns.

It was a different 8220;Kissa Kursi Ka8221;: Algu Chaudhary and Jumman Sheikh were to experience the charm of the chair by turns.nbsp;And what a magnetic effect it would have on them. Jumman had a running dispute with his aunt, who felt she had been led down the garden path after she transferred all her property to his name. Further, he neither took care of her nor gave her any money.

Driven to desperation, she went to the panchayat to settle the dispute. That Algu was chosen as sarpanch lifted the spirits of Jumman, as the two werenbsp;childhood friends. Jumman thought that through the cloudy prism of friendship fair would benbsp;foul and foul would be fair. But to his shock, the verdict went against him.

Sulking, he began to wait for an opportunity to settlenbsp;the score with Algu. As luck would have it, the opportunity came rather soon. Jumman sold one ofnbsp;hisnbsp;bulls to a man called Samajhu Sahu.nbsp;Sahu8217;s greed for moneynbsp;not only broke several boundaries of humanity, but it also proved to be back-breakingnbsp;for the bull. The animal died; it could not survive his cruelty.

Sahu had not paid Algu the price of thenbsp;bull. After the animal8217;s death, he had decided that he wouldn8217;t ever pay. Helpless, Algu knocked on the panchayat8217;s door. He was in for more shock when Jumman was made sarpanch. Seeing this, he decided that the case was as good as lost. Nonetheless, he pursued it, and to his surprise, won 8212; thanks to the sanctity of the chair Jumman occupied, a sanctity he did not want to violate.

If Munshi Premchand, whose birthday was on July 31, had to write the story 8220;Panch Parmeshwar8221; again, one of the characters could well be Somnath Chatterjee. As for the other character, why not Prakash Karat? Elected to the chair, I am sure even he would have upheld its dignity, keeping in mind the efforts of his friend Somnath to keep the chair above political ground. Comrades, don8217;t blame Somnath; blame it on the speaker8217;s chair as it is a different kursi, and read Premchand, a writer with left leanings.