Sheikh Chilli : A Person who Does not Understand the Law of Gravity

A Tale of Two Generations: A Story from the Ancient Indus Valley Civilization
Sheikh Chilli, a famous character among children in the subcontinent of India, is notorious for his follies and simplicity. One thing that people of the subcontinent always attribute to sheikh chilli is that he never cared about laws of nature. He built castles in the air and in his imagination established great businesses, empires, became a prince, married a princes-and in the end of the story the castle in the air vanished and Sheikh Chilli found him surrounded by the people laughing at him.

One day, Sheikh Chilli, needing a few logs of wood, went to the woods with an axe in his hand, along with his friends. He climbed a tree and sat on a bough. Looking at the tree and the woods he started fancying, as usual.  He closed his eyes and thought that he would cut a log from the tree and sell it in the market. In return he will earn some money and save it somewhere. He will work day and night and save some money and appoint a few people to work for him. With the appointment of these workers he will start timber trade, and progressing ahead in life he will also start a furniture business.

Sheikh thought and thought and built castles in the air. In the mean time he also started his work, for he had to cut some logs initially to start this business. He was then simultaneously cutting the log with his axe and fancying that he became so rich that the king decided to marry his beautiful daughter to the Sheikh. With this thought Sheikh increased the pace of his work and started throwing the axe on the log more vigorously.

Then the time of marriage came and Sheikh was about to proceed to his marriage bed along with his beautiful wife. As he was about to embrace his wife, he found that he had a great fall. He fell from the tree because he was cutting the same bough on which he was sitting. And with this fall, Sheikh’s plane also came to naught. Sheikh’s friends who were watching this episode laughed at Sheikh’s innocence and helped him to reach home.

There are hundreds of such stories attributed to Sheikh ChilThe Ants and the Grasshopper Level 3 [With Video] (Aesop's Fables: Level 3)li and children enjoy his character very much. Each time Sheikh violates a law of nature, not as his disobedience to nature, but because of his innocence and simplicity.

Children find his acts interesting, for they are also in a phase of learning about the laws of nature and most often they also violate the law of gravity to fall down from a chair or a small wall in their backyard.

Sheikh’s episodes are good for teaching the meaning of laws of nature and society and there is no better way of teaching these things to children.

By: Khalid Jamil Rawat