There was a small town. Town head used to live in a villa at
the one end of the town. The villa was really awesome, everyone used to say to
each other. Yet, everyone knew that no other place in town has most acrid
stench than the villa. Because the villa had drainage nullah flowing next to
it. As one can predict, those who lived in villa had a wall built around the
nullah, so no one ever saw it. The room fresheners were regularly used to ward
off the stench. Yet, the nullah has a strange property that whenever there was
a party or some official function in the villa, disgusting stench will pervade
the villa. Since villa belong to the town head, no one really said anything,
but everybody smelled it.
As it happens,
there was new chirpy lad in the town who started saying that town head must be
a dumb one since he allows the stench to emerge from the pathetic nullah. Town
people were really surprised at the courage shown by the new lad. They started
finding him at everywhere in the town,
explaining how all problems in the town are due to this invisible but irritable
stench. At first, they laughed when he said that our children are shorter in
height than neighboring town because of stench. But then some of them, who were
really the shortest of the lots or whose children were started finding agreeing
to the explanation. After all, wrong explanation is better than scientific
heartless explanation, which is worse than no explanation.
He further told
them that he has a formula, a well-proven recipe that can make stench go away.
They laughed at first, but then they thought may be he really has it. Some of
them, as some inquisitive useless guys we find even around us, asked him to
prove. Then he said, why don’t you get stench all the time. I often use my
recipe for your benefit, though for the most powerful recipe, it has to be
conducted from the villa itself.
Some laughed,
some pondered and some really took this idea as their purpose. And as it
happens, it is madness of followers that makes the idea look like the right
one, soon town had just one talk: why shouldn’t new lad be there at villa?
Town head, as most
of the heads do, first neglected the whole affair. Then he sent his own men to
catch the lad, which he called ‘the buffoon’.
The new lad, or
should we call him the ‘the challenger’, stood in the corner and started
telling people how stench, if not remedied through his recipe can make the
villa residents go mad. He told them that stench can make villa residents cling
to the villa, thinking all the town as their enemies. He warned them to be
aware of the stench, most notorious of them all. Then he was taken by head’s men.
No one knows what
caused it, but next day, unbearable stench ran through the whole town. Some skeptics said that it is man-made. But
many thought it is quite a far-fetched to believe that such stench can be
generated by any human action. They instead took to the streets and gathered
around the villa, asking to set the challenger free.
Town head was
caught in the trap, where only win was humble retreat. But head thought that he
can turn the tide of the stench and his fortune, though he never really knew
what caused it first. The villa, the balcony overlooking the town makes one
feel so potent.
Then things ran
their course, where pathetic fight of the town head was sequentially drawn in
the euphoria of change, dream of the stench-less town and challenger at the
helm. And, one bright day, the challenger, or the buffoon as he was called,
waved to town people from the villa.
As no one knows
why yet as it happens always, the first few days were really fantastic. To
celebrate such good times and irrefutable win of magical recipe over the evil
stench, the challenger or should we say the new head thought of having a
celebration.
When the party
was at its peak, everybody started smelling the acrid stench. And in no time,
the festive mood turned soar.
So the recipe
hasn’t worked? Asked one.
I believe he will
find the new recipe to tackle this new problem, assured the optimistic one to
the critic.
But this is just
same stench as the earlier one. Critic, without being smart, was trying to win
the argument.
The challenger
smiled and said, look, my friend, the stench is same, even more over-powering,
but these are the death bells of the stench. Please bear it once because I am
working on best of recipe and in few days the stench will be gone forever.
Everybody clapped
and critic retreated as one has to wait for the inevitably futile answers or
have to be ever optimistic cheer leader.
The ex-town
head, who was looking at the melee from window of his dungeon cell of neglect,
murmured to ghost of ex-ex-town head, ‘this one really belongs to the tradition
of villa as we belonged once’. The ghost laughed and blew a amnesia over the
town, where everybody was preparing for their last fight,once in epochs as
their leader said, against the evil stench.
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