The five scholars stood before the child, who couldn't be older than four or five, confused and questioning the life choices that led them there. They had been told that although Manu Chand hired them, the real employer was the child standing before them.
"Greetings. I'm Vir Chand and will be working with you from today onwards. My father should have informed you about the nature of the work we will do here, right?" Vir broke the awkward silence first.
Among the speechless scholars, Nandan acted first and answered, "Yes, sir. We were told that we would be studying the Khariboli language and writing a dictionary. Although we are still unclear about the details, we are aware of the work we are expected to do."
Nandan spoke formally to Vir. It didn't matter that Vir was young. If he was the person employing him then he was his superior and thus needed to be respected.
Nandan had been studying for over two decades and writing poetry for at least one of those two decades. He couldn't become popular in Delhi as a poet and it was hard to make a living. With the succession wars raging, there was a severe lack of patrons of arts so it became even harder.
For scholars like Nandan, opportunities to use their knowledge to make a living were drying up rapidly so this job was like a godsend. It didn't matter that the job itself was strange or that the young employer seemed even stranger. He couldn't write poetry when he had no food to eat.
The other scholars around Nandan were making similar calculations at the same time. They had traveled from different places in search of a means to make a living with scholarly work and they were not about to let go of the opportunity that fell on their laps.
There were too many unemployed poets, writers, and scholars out there looking for a job.
"Well then, shall we start with introductions?" Vir asked.
Nandan once again took the initiative before everyone else and bowed slightly, "First, I would like to apologize that we have yet to introduce ourselves and shown discourtesy towards you. My name is Nandan and I am a poet from Delhi.
This old gentleman is Ahmed and he is a poet from Patna.
This friend over here is Mani and he hails from the southern dominions but has been living in Patna for decades.
This friend is Velan and he hails from further south than Velan here. He had been traveling around as a wandering poet and ended up here.
And lastly, this friend is Das. He is young but very knowledgeable and considered a promising poet."
The poets had been acquainted with each other for a while since they were from the same circle and had been living near Bombay for a while, so it wasn't difficult for Nandan to make simple introductions. Each of them got up and gave a sufi salute as a greeting as they were being introduced.
"Now that introductions are done, let's sit down and begin the discussions on what you will be doing and how we will be handling the work of standardizing the grammar and creating a dictionary." The discussions began with Vir's declaration.
As the discussions continued, the group sat down on chairs around a large table. The scholars took time to admire the luxurious furniture in the room for the first time. They were too distracted by Vir to think of other things until then.
Midway through the discussions, Vir began to talk about the script of the language and the grammar that he knew from his past life so the scholars began furiously scribbling on the papers with pens made out of reed.
Reed pens were made out of reed plant stems that were shaped into a pen shape. The writer had to dip the tip of the pen in ink to write on the paper. Every time the ink dried up on the pen, the writer had to dip the pen in ink. Although it was tedious most pens at the time were similar.
The discussions that began in the morning went on until the evening. Lunch was served in the workshop by the servants in the afternoon. By the time they walked out, the scholars were each holding paper in their hands.
While walking to the accommodations provided to them, Nandan asked the group, "What do you all think of this?"
All of them looked at the papers in their hands and began thinking about various things, The one who answered was Ahmed, the oldest one in the group.
"It is simply amazing. For someone so young to have such deep thoughts, he must be a child blessed by god. If we complete this work, our names might be etched in the pages of history. We may not be Khusrou or Kabir but our contributions to language will be remembered for generations to come."
The excited words of the old man lit a fire in everyone else's eyes. The dream of leaving their names in history like the great artists was a shared dream for them all. Who wouldn't want to be remembered?
The youngest of the group, Das, asked with some confusion, "Isn't it just simplifying and standardizing the grammar and writing the meanings of the words in different languages? Is it really that great?"
Velan who was the most traveled answered Das, "If you travel in any direction for a week or two from here, you will hear a completely different language being spoken by the people. Think about how amazing it would be if there were a book that helped people understand those languages.
If you reduce the time and just travel for a couple of days, you will notice that the dialects and the manner of speaking start to differ. With systemized scripts and grammar that can be resolved. That's the kind of book that we are working on."
Everyone nodded at Velan's words. It was a very meaningful work that excited them endlessly. They wanted to work on it more as soon as possible.
Ahmed suddenly spoke in a very serious tone, "Our young employer is a genius who has the appearance of someone who will accomplish great things. I hope everyone here heeds his warning and does not disclose anything about all of this to the outside."
Nandan who had already decided to gamble and become loyal to Vir nodded, "It would be stupid to leave the side of such a genius. On top of that, crossing the Chand family is something that even emperors hesitate to do, so I don't think anyone would do that."
It wasn't a secret that Manu Chand was distantly related to the Jagat Seths of Bengal. There are legends about the Jagat Seths' wealth being able to stop a river by making a dam out of silver. Nobody wanted to die under the weight of their silver by crossing them.
And so, from the next day, work began earnestly on the Khariboli language and the dictionary. Vir contributed all his knowledge for the first two weeks but after that, there wasn't much for him to do except for some occasional consulting and discussions.
While working with the scholars, Vir had to write a lot of notes and found it very frustrating to write with a reed pen. He missed the ballpoint pens and the expensive fountain pens his father used to get him every year in his past life.
Vir would rank first in his class every year and his father would buy him an increasingly expensive pen every year. "The best people should write with the best pens." He would say.
Reminiscing about the life and family that he had left behind Vir smiled.
'The principles of how a fountain pen works aren't too complicated. I guess I will have to develop a fountain pen myself. Metal nibs with rounded tips on a lacquered wooden body with brass interior should be fine.'
Although it wouldn't be anywhere close to the pens he was used to, Vir was sure that the pen he thought of would be much easier to write with than the existing reed pens.
Immediately that evening Vir told his father about his idea of making fountain pens with crude drawings. "We can fill the ink from the top opening and write until the ink runs out without any interruptions."
When Vir ended his explanation, Manu held Vir by his arms and lifted him high in excitement. "How can you come up with such ideas? Aren't you blessed by the heavens for real? This will revolutionize writing as we know it and make a lot of money."
'Fountain pens have existed as a concept since long ago and handmade ones should already be available in some places in Europe as novelty items. But selling handmade fountain pens should still make a lot of money.'
Vir's thoughts were cut short by Manu who put him down and continued talking, "We shouldn't let this leak until we start to officially produce these pens. I'll get some trustworthy artisans to work with you. When you have a viable design we can start hiring more artisans."
With that, a new schedule was added to Vir's daily routine. Every morning after a bath, he had his breakfast and went to the workshop. After discussing the tasks for the day, he moved to another annex where the artisans worked.
With the artisans, he finalized the design, let them create a rough prototype, and got back to the workshop to read and help the scholars.
Books were starting to arrive from the European traders. For now, the books that arrived were all that were already brought in the past. The books to be brought from Europe had yet to arrive.
Vir would have lunch with his father and spend the rest of the day either reading or observing his father working. In the evening, he watched the soldiers train in swordsmanship to do some image training.
In his past life, due to both his and Anand's fathers being very rich and influential, the two friends were enrolled in self-defense classes from a young age. The martial arts looked cool, so the two boys continued it until college. So, Vir knew Jiu Jutsu, Taekwondo, and Boxing.
Although those martial arts were good for hand-to-hand combat, this was a time when swords were still used for battles. Guns were starting to replace cold weapons slowly but with the popularization of flintlocks still a decade away, learning swords wasn't too bad.
Before it turned completely dark outside, Vir would sit down and write the things he learned as a student through textbooks. He wrote in code just in case someone else found the papers though.
Vir had always had an excellent memory but after waking up in this young body, it seemed like his memory had been further enhanced so the notes were more of a precaution than a necessity. It was for a possible situation where his memory might begin to deteriorate.
Additionally, organizing the knowledge by grade as he had learned them would help in the future. He could quickly write the books for the required level. The idea of advancing mankind by two centuries single-handedly was tempting but he resisted.
Dumping textbooks from the future does not mean progress will happen. If anything, there could be more chaos. As the saying goes, people learn a lot more through their failures than their successes. Vir didn't want to rob humanity of its chance to learn from its failures.
Skipping a few decades of development to gain an edge over other countries is already pushing it, going too far ahead would only lead to uncontrollable variables. For his own benefit, Vir couldn't create too many variables.