They give you what you are due. A hearing. Then they act. They act because they have empathy. They act because they put themselves in your shoes and then they let their cognition do the rest. If they act for you, your problem is solved and you can advance to other important things that you need to do to contribute to yourself and to society until you’re again faced with another interference to your advancement in which case, you will be due another hearing and which by all accounts, you shall be provided.

Sometimes they may act against you after the hearing. But that’s fine if you are convinced that what they did was right – by not acting for you. If you aren’t convinced, you expostulate, you reason. If they turn a deaf ear, you resort to a form of protest but not before pushing it to the edge with dialogue fueled with reason.

Ideally, I think this is how a normal course should meander amongst the policy-practitioners and policy-makers. They make their decisions regarding policy and we have to live it which is fine because that is how the modern world sees normalcy stamp its almost indelible mark on all things concerning the citizenry. I have no problem with this practice because when you do get to the bottom of it, it is us who lay the foundation by proposing who gets to have a say in making those policies because they are supposed to be representing us.

One would then expect to have at least a regular briefing of exactly what they talk about, in the least. In Nepal, having such expectations only makes us more of non-believers because when you look towards a-day-in-the-life-of us, you wish they would, if nothing else, at least be capable of steadily providing us with the most rudimentary necessities that would help us keep afloat in the ever raging rivers of sanity.

We deserve an explanation for this gross incapability in their part. Forget explanation, can we set deadlines? At least, give us a damn date! If it’s five years down the line that there will finally be 24 hour uninterrupted supply of electricity, tell us clearly and we will plan with due regard. Also, we will monitor progress against this deadline after we determine that five years indeed is a fair estimate.

Some of us will make decisions accordingly. Unlike them, we need reliable information and data supporting it to make decisions. Our decisions and consequences based on those decisions will measure us; these measurements will clearly tell how credible and accountable we are.

They don’t ever stop battling over the linearity of command in governance once the current one crumbles. The presently embarrassing share-war over rehabilitation packages illustrates how much of visionaries they are!

Here’s the thing though. Since they are not equipped with accountability, in fact, they are waxing overflowing complacence all over the map, it is easy to not have much room for an honest hearing. They are so full of apathy that they value our most underscored problems — namely, shortages of you-name-its — like a whale values a TV. Their indifference unfortunately is leaving barely any wiggle room for their cognizance. When there’s a glaring shortage of cognizance on them, they will not be able to digest dialogues fueled with reason. And that’s when we resort to a form of protest – a protest for us to be able to just live, with sanity – for we deserve not a stitch less.

My mother and the Prime Minister – Dr. Baburam Bhattarai sat for the SLC examinations the same year. By now, all of Nepal knows who the topper was! Whoever doesn’t but can think has yet to be duly processed, I say. In the same breath she had proceeded to explain that the man who had headed “Samyukta Janamukti Morcha” back then had also secured first place throughout the country in another one of those brain torchers: I Sc a. k. a. Intermediate of Science.

Anyone who could beat my mother at anything easily scored high points in my book and it took me no time to ‘know’ this man. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai – W H O A! But then why did this genius wasn’t the PM whereas some goof who apparently couldn’t clear the SLC sitting on the PM Chair? I had naively posed that question to my uncle who also hadn’t been able to clear the SLC despite sitting for it, a family-record, 7 times!

“Padhera ko nai thulo bha’a cha ra Bhatij?”, he had told me then. That was Kaka-Life-Lesson # 11, I think. My mother had just sighed and left the room whereas my father had looked like he was about to open a can of whoop-ass on his brother. That didn’t happen.

Kaka must be cringing since yesterday. Now, “thulo hunu” may mean to you something else than what it may mean to my Kaka. To me, in Nepal, you don’t thulo bhaing more than Dr. BRB is today and in the process somehow made his fiercest hater his ardent cheerleader. BRB should totally author a book about that and title it: “Making A Supporter Out Of Your Enemy – For Dummies”.

Thousands have perished since BRB’s SJMM eventually merged with a couple of other fringe and radical communist parties back in early 90s to form CPN-M that would wage a war that you and I and our kids will be talking for a long long time. I’m still confused about the war in that I can’t find a way to justify it (millions seem to be able to – last election?) and hence lost all respect for the ‘educated fools’ like BRB. What did more than 15000 die for? To oust that chuckle-headed tyrant called Gyanendra Shah and his man-slaughtering son? If so, what different have the rest that have come after him been?

How can you put a face-value on life?

It’s been 64 years since India gained its independence and it really is a pity that nothing Gandhinian could evolve since then except talk. We’re still out to cut each other’s throats in the name of independence. Look independence is nice – but is that all that matters? We’ve got our heads up our assess because of this ‘Independent’ tag.

What independence? After the Sugauli Sandhi, India, no matter who ruled her, has always had a hand in how our politics is played. We’ve had to go look for work and education in nations that were not independent in their modern history but were a cut above us by light years. Has anything changed? Hell yes it has! They’ve gone on to become economic powers of clout whereas we have been cut down to size – by us.

Until we realize that it is us who have been strangling our nation and our development, we’ll not be gaining any independence I don’t think. Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Jhal Nath Khanal came to lead but saw to it that we’d be left to question our conscience by every passing day. Every hope has been a humiliation. Every change has been a curse. Every one has been not a stud to save us, but a dud determined to destroy us save for their interests, for the most part.

I walk back from work these days. Mostly, I take the bus when going to work. I see people and what they wear on their faces. No really – I just stare like a kid staring at a suggestive poster of a dance bar. I hear a lot of chatter. There are at least 20 chiya pasals between my work and the house where I live. People are positive.

I browse Twitter (I follow you all) and FB and other Nepali sites and blogs regularly. Words are positive. I talk to my mother – she’s positive – and she’s no Nepali Politician cheerleader my friend. Just as that lady in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” (had to watch it with my girl at the time) hated the Turks, my mother hates the Nepali Politicians, all the more when they are of the left variety.

What many who came before couldn’t accomplish, this man may. When he read Marx, Che, etc. he knew he had to represent the people to bring the change he desired. He sure has his chance how, doesn’t he? He’s proclaimed that communism in this day and age must moulded so as to be less radical and more reasonable to fit into the ways of this ever globalizing and changing world. He’s snubbed hardliners within his own party. People in his own party have vowed to kill him and yet, it is this man who’s having the last laugh and who’s changed some heretics to believe in his path of peace and constitution.

Can he change us too?

Have you ever played Ludo? If you haven’t, chances are you aren’t from around the Indian Subcontinent. And if you haven’t played Ludo, you – oh you – uncivilized being, I pity you. I just do, because, you most probably also haven’t gotten your hands dirty with boric-powder (kinda looks like crack) playing the greatest of board games there is: Carrom.

I grew up playing these board games along with Chess (could never beat my father), Business (sort of like the Subcontinent’s Monopoly), Snakes & Ladders (on back boards of the 99.99% Ludos that existed back then) and on the non-board game front it was Guccha (KTM, Pokhara) a.k.a Marbles (khoppi, Gai, etc.), Chungi (everywhere), Lattoo (only in Pokhara), Football (Soccer and everywhere), Cricket (KTM), Seven Stones (Birgunj), and once in a while, Kabbadi (Biratnagar) and Dandi-Biyo (Biratnagar).

After SLC, they were pretty much replaced by Marriage and Faaaalaaash!

Today, I chanced upon a Carrom board after a long long time and it opened the floodgates of my childhood nostalgia (read above) yet again and with it the inspiration to draw yet another analogy.

BLOGAN Advisory: a few Codes may be broken below. Yes.

So .. it looks like the Prime Minister will honor his part of the bargain to keep the 5-pointer afloat – which is good (all things considered) for the country.

Only thing is, these PM candidates remind me of the Ludo chips that got to the ‘star-signed-block’ (not ‘Home’). In that block – the star-signed-one, your chip would always be safe, while it was there. To win the game, you’d eventually have to get your chips out of the ‘safe’ star-signed-block to the ‘danger-blocks’: where they could be passed by your opponents’ chips in which case you’d have to start all over again.

In Ludo, you start with a few chips from a ‘start’ block and send them ‘Home’ by rolling dices. If you get all your chips ‘Home’ before your opponents do, you win.

These PM candidates in Nepal, when they get to Baluwatar, have their fates like that of the Ludo chips that are in the ‘safe’ star-signed-blocks. However, they never seem to get to win once they’re out (and they’re out like the rain is out in Shrawan). Neither them individually, nor their parties win. Look at what’s happened to Mr. Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Mr. Madhav Kumar Nepal, and now, the lameduck PM Mr. Jhal Nath Khanal. And look at their respective parties both of which are a hair away from splitting up n-ways!

Does that bide well for the Nepali Congress? Hell yes, it would – if only they knew how to play their chips. Oldies can’t stop their infighting and Mr. Sher Bahadur Deuba cannot stop himself from showcasing his sycophantic skills to Mr. Ram Chandra Poudel and to the rest of the party and the country, much to dismay of one Mr. Bam Dev Gautam.

Another thing about the ‘safe’ block in Ludo and its weirdly close correlation to the Nepali PM designation – both stops at best are transit points where after you re-embark, you find yourself in a much worse position than you were before you got to the ‘safe’ block. Just ask Mr. Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

Mr. Dahal is once again so damn close to bagging that Baluwatar street address but the man knows better! He already learned his lesson when he got played like a pinata by the late Girija Prasad Koirala. Now Prachanda wants it for the long haul and is planning accordingly. He knows no one from the UML (again) will be acceptable to the Maoists, to the Congress, to the thousand Madhesi parties (Mr. Upendra Yadav of course doesn’t give a hoot), and even the bickering UMLs themselves (this, only in Nepal).

Mr Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s close plotting with the pattern of past politics in Nepal will see him as the one who indeed will have the last laugh – mark my words here my fellow Nepalis! Sure, the NC President Mr. Sushil Koirala will not get his wish and see Mr. Dahal re-entering Baluwatar as its temporary owner. Neither, to Mr. Koirala’s relief, will Mr. Deuba – though Mr. Deuba must be doing some serious servitude to the stakeholders that be, even as we speak.

That leaves us with the one and only intellectual amongst all these buffoons: Mr. Baburam Bhattarai. Only, thousands have paid the ultimate price to enhance this man’s intellectuality, yes? Is it worth it? I don’t know – but we sure have changed – and I hope, for the better this time! Mr. Mohan Baidya, it seems will be A.O.K. with anything just as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. Pushpa Kamal Dahal claiming absolute ownership.

Nepali Congress, sadly, makes a move after the Maoists make a move. Only problem for the NC is that the moves of the Maoists have never been so unpredictable. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Dina Nath Sharma came out of one of those CC meetings and said: “Mr Baidya has hereby claimed the Chairmanship of the Party after he shaved Mr. Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s moustache while Mr. Dahal was dozing off when Mr. Narayan Kaji Shrestha was speaking.” Mr. Deuba’s hard work will have gone in vain, then. Alas, none of this is happening yet.

For Mr. Bhattarai here, the man seems the perfect fit to play PM to oversee the Peace Process come close to the finish line and promulgate the cover of the Nepali Constitution. He will, however, not be able to see through the end of this infinite transition period we’re all going through once he is forced to step out of the ‘safe’ block by his handlers.

They’ve got varying degrees of tilts in their tongue and an earful of emotions up their sleeves. When they open their pie-holes up on that podium, and you can’t run for cover because you’ve got your own interests to protect, they do so with fire in their eyes and overtones of rancorous rhetoric. Two minutes into the act and their breath ignites thereby spitting a hate-load of hostility and their jaws refuse to unclench. They turn everything south of the Metacarpals into a fist and punch air – if air were a person, that air would need a night at Norvic.

They criticize without logic, blame without looking at the mirror, negate when the red ink is dry, make Harshad Mehta turn in his grave by lying and misleading with a straight face on every other occasion they get, and prove to us that they indeed, don’t belong. And on top of that, their faces speak to us forming every structure that a nature-made face can formulate; every structure except the structure that forms on a face when it smiles.
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