Buddha Boy has the right idea, he should now come to Kathmandu and whack JNK, PKD and RCP to knock some sense into them. What is worrying a lot of people is the desperation that PKD is showing to be PM. He is ready to do anything, give anything to anyone to be prime minister again. Even within his own party comrades are concerned The Great Helmsman is willing to accept OMOP, induct Madhesis into the army and sell our rivers down the river.

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Awesome is even willing to wear a florid Hawaiian shirt to soften his image and is projecting a surprisingly mild persona to his interlocutors these days. Which is why the Maobaddies and Rajabaddies are behaving like long-lost lovers. The smooching between Comrade Lotus Flower and Lotus Eater the other day at the RPP Nepal secretariat had to be seen to be believed. Awesome appears to have got RPP's four votes in return for Lotus Eater getting Defence in the new coalishun. Just goes to prove there are no permanent enemies in politics, only chronic back-stabbers.

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The now-famous Kantipur interview with BRB seems to have gone off like a gagri bum at the Pistachio Palace this week. Comrade Babu aimed a barb or two at his Bossman by criticising those who are "obsessed with the lust for power" and went on to say that he was himself ready to take up the baton if his party instructed him to, and if that was what it took to end the deadlock. Chairman Awesome "got a rude shock", according to his aides, and saw red when he read the interview. (Surgeon General's Warning: Criticism within the Maoist party has been known to lead to serious health hazards, house arrest and ultimately, cardiac arrest). Sensing his Q&A had raised serious hackles, BRB made a hasty departure, wife and dotter in tow, out of mobile range in Kakani. His loyal left-hand man, Comrade Partha, was left behind to handle the flak and impart some pretty pithy epithets about the Chairman. Seems Ram can say things Babu Ram can't say.

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The bad blood in the upper echelons of the Mau Mau seems to be percolating down to the rank and file. A turf war between rival Mao unions in a Balaju shoe factory shut down production of the shoe of choice of Baddies during the war. A dispute over the division of the spoils between Maoist middlemen has closed down the biggest sand and boulder mining operation in Dhading. Even guerrillas in the mist harvesting yarsagumba in Dolpo are pitted against each other. What poppies are for the Taliban, caterpillars are for the Baddies. Inmates of the Surkhet cantonment are all AWOL this month because they had followed Com Marshal to pick yarsa in Dhorpatan where they ran into another caterpillar hunter, Com Bibidh aka Kali Budder Kham. The two were once partners in the trade in stolen cars from India, but have now fallen out big time. Lately, they have been ratting on each other to the cops. When two Chinese caterpillar buyers got robbed in Gonga Bu, police pretended to launch a nationwide dragnet for Kham. They should look for him in Dhorpatan.

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Senior Nepali bureaucrats are always in a fix when they get multiple diplomatic invites for receptions that clash. They have come up with an ingenious way to prioritise: go to the biggest donor first. So it happened on Monday that the "Joint" Secretaries went first to the ADB ($500 million) and then to UKAid (circa $150 million) and only then to the Egyptian Embassy ($0).

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