Tuesday, December 23, 2008

No End to Politically Aggravated Lunacy!

Yup! I found the perfect expansion of NEPAL as it stands today (sorry.. as it is moving into the future...) But just to put it to record... we used to once say it stood for "Never Ending Peace and Love" (not perfect "inglis" but the message was there), which was given up a long long time ago. We had hung on desperately to this till about 1995/96, when all hell finally broke loose! Mention that nowadays and you might be stoned (literally or transcendentally)...



I cannot describe exactly what I feel nowadays towards my beloved nation. I am patriotic, there is no doubt about that, but this is not blind love. I can SEE a lot, and what I see makes me want to vomit!

Ours is a country who could have sat still and still gained. Every Nepali loves that, we are a pretty lazy bunch anyways, and can be contend with very little. Crushed between two giants, we have had the best that can be had from these massive economies, considering our situation. The cost of existence in Nepal is still comparatively low. I have lived in Ghana in West Africa for the past few years, and the cost of living in a country that produces little and has very little industrialization is very evident, where everything is astronomically expensive. We still have the benefit of open borders, our currency pegged to the Indian Rupee, and a good "understanding" between smugglers and police that releases enough chinese goods to make every citizen happy.

So, it is clear that there was no reason to "have eaten the tail of a goat" (bakhra ko puchhar khane)... if we had just stayed calm, kept ourselves peaceful and patient (you would have thought that we would have learnt a bit from the teachings that came out of Buddha's extreme starvation meditation which brought about enlightenment), we could have benefited a lot from these two 21st century superpowers.... actually, we still can, but we might just have reached the point of no return!

No, but we are Nepalese people, lovers of momo and buffalo meat! I think we have the brain the size of the buffalo meat inside those damn momos! We are lovers of proverbs (like "aphnu khutta ma bancharo hanne") which is exactly what we like to do (wake up countrymen, those proverbs are there for us to learn from them, not prove it!)... So we go forward and prove "lata ko desh ma ganda tanderi", "nepali ko salla kharani ko dalla" and "gu kotaye ganauchha" . How hopeless are we?

I think there will be lots of you who share this sentiment, specially as we get closer and closer to the threshold level of proverbial Nepali patience.

But I do not want to dwell on this. I am out to write about politics and politicians, I am raving mad and I hope I can draw blood!

I cannot believe there can be any other country in this world (OK, which is not ruled by a dictator or a bunch of gun toting teenagers) where a lawmaker, a leader elected by the people to review the laws of the land, can defend attacks on someone else's property and injury to people as a form of "self-defense"..

A country where it takes forever to form a government because the politicians cannot stop squabbling..

A country where mass murderers can become saviors overnight, where criminals with a track record can represent the same people they conducted their crimes on.

Where unions who represent the masses who need employment are out to shut industries or create an environment where industries cannot survive

Where the only education you can get (at least nowadays) is how to burn tires and throw stones at the police and how to bring a country to a standstill.

Where does this come from? I thought we were reasonably smart people, who discovered how to eat "sisnu ko jhol" in case of emergency, learnt how to preserve "saag" by making "gundruk", were talented enough to enjoy and cultivate the art of insta-ballad ("Dohori") etc.. When did we turn from this into sheep, following the lunacy of these politicians who cannot see beyond their own asses, with their heads stuck up you know where...

OK, I cannot continue, at this point I am thoroughly disgusted, my threshold is reached. (let me go and vomit now!)

Saturday, December 6, 2008

The Melting Himalayas

photo: The Everest Range, copyright socialtours

The importance of the Himalayan Range in controlling global temperatures have been well known, but not enough is being done to actually monitor it on a regular basis, providing reliable data to help find ways and means to save this planet.

Was relieved to see an article come up on the BBC website based on a conference done by ICIMOD highlighting this problem... hopefully this will raise awareness.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

The Fascination of Masks



This is truly interesting. Had a chance to see 365 Krampus (demons) do a walk in Zams, Tirol, in Austria. Creatures in hideous to plain silly masks came in droves, from different parts of Tirol, to participate in this run, on a real cold saturday evening.

Apart from the boyish fascination I have of cultural events such as this, it makes me wonder. Every where in the world, almost in every ethnicity, you see something to do with masks.. with this need to be someone else... someone you are not! I wonder what led us to do this, and how did that transition happen, from being just social food gatherers to trying to be someone else!

Thats really interesting, isn't it?

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