After getting hammered with a bevy of protests in the form of Nepal Bandhs during the past few years, I thought I had grown a thick enough skin to be able to withstand almost anything thrown at us – the general public, in the name of protests. It is, after all, we, who have to bear the brunt of both sides. My skin, as I have realized just now, is growing older, not thicker; and if anything is more susceptible to be infiltrated and compromised than being immune to chaos.

Protests in a Nepali nutshell –> If it’s not the Political Parties, it’s the teachers. If it’s not the teachers, it’s the students. If it’s not the students, it’s the gasoline vendors. If it’s not the gasoline vendors, it’s the cabbies. If it’s not the cabbies, it’s my neighbor protesting against his wife who beats the living crap out of him about once a fortnight. He protests to no end, and to no avail – only to get abused again. His life, sadly, has become a microcosm of that of the general Nepali public’s.

To sum up, majority of us do not have what we desire. I understand how this generic analysis applies to everyone but a Yogi, but this is in a Nepali socio-political context (Do I sound like those NGO peeps or what?).

Definitely not an aberration to say then that it will be long before the majority of this country is inherently satisfied with the System and can agree with each other. Until we don’t, there will always be protests – and which is fine. It is, after all, our fundamental right to stand up to elements that don’t want to see things the way we want to see things and voice dissent. Funny thing is, most of the times, the process is the opposite in Nepal when it comes to protests. We like to protest first and then talk later. Doing the latter first would save most of us much weariness – that’s for sure.

You protest because you’re unhappy with a process. This process could be the way your parents handle you, or the manner in which your boss treats you, or the gross increase in your college’s tution which can’t be explained, or the abuse you take from the khalasi everyday (in my case), or against the people in charge of the political landscape who have yet to show some results, etc. etc.

There are legitimate reasons to protest, I get it. But who protests against an alleged police wrongdoing when one of your own gets caught commiting a crime? Our ISPs, of course. And the people that again bear the brunt are us – you and I.

The right to Internet Service is a fundamental (interim) Constitutional right of a Nepali citizen. Unacceptably violiting my rights, the ISPs decided to turn their routers off for an hour this afternoon in Nepal causing me mass anger. ISPs, if you say you were wronged by the Government because they’re charging you more taxes, I may be with you. If you say that one of yours was wrongly detailed by the police, perhaps because he was trying to organize a mass protest by sending out emails to his customers (perhaps unsolicitated), after a long and hard thought, I may still be with you. If you say you’re not ever cutting off porn sites from the Nepali public, I may come and kiss your feet.

But when you say, they nabbed one of yours because he/she was illegally hosting and consuming VOIP servies, come on now! What do you expect the cops to do? Buy you a top-notch Cisco Router with streaming Video Conferencing server to complement your VOIP hardware that you’re using to make NRS out of and illegally?

Either kick that person out from being one of yours or protest that you want to be able to host and consume VOIP servies without any government interference. If you do the latter, I may just join you. But don’t you take away our Constitutional right for a reason that is idiotic at best else we may have to hit the streets to protest against a very Unconstitutional You!

Remember this Nepali ISPs: it’s apparently not Unconstitutional to not provide us electricity and water, but when you start cutting off our 24-hour dosage of Facebook and Twitter (electricity or no electricity – we will access), it is just inexcusable; and like Mr. Russell Peters says, “Some bady gonna get a hurt’.