As Dasains go, this year's festive season had a somewhat somnolent quality. Many of us logged 18 hours of sleep a day, waking up only to gnaw at an uneaten mountain goat, belching frequently in a loud and carefree manner, chewing the cud by re-eating juicy morsels of aforementioned ex-goat picked out from between molars, plopping paans in the mouth, pocketing marriage winnings, turning over, and going back to sleep. I know what you're muttering, you're muttering: how is all this different from a non-Dasain day in the Ministry of Labour's Department of Sloth and Lethargy? Good question.

In fact, one expert who has closely researched the cicardian rhythms of an average adult male in this country points out that our sleeping patterns are essentially the same, Dasain or no Dasain. As citizens of a landlocked Himalayan kingdom that has never ever in its entire history been colonised by aliens from the Planet Hoth, we have all had a nice long vacation and now, fully rested, we can once more plunge headfirst into the task of nation-building and send protest notes to all foreign radio stations, television quiz shows and religious organisations wearing khaki shorts which deign to cast aspersions on our extra-territorial mega-sovereignty, that Nepal takes a dim view of such dorks.

The contrite responses are commensurate with the stature, respect and, yes, even fear that Nepal commands in the international community. First to wave the white flag was the BBC. The British broadcasting cowards sent His Majesty's Govern-ment a letter of capitulation calling for a ces-sation of hostilities, unilateral withdrawal of all its forces from within a 10,000 km radius of Makwanpur Gadi, and the payment of an annual reparation of an amount equalling, but not exceeding, 25 percent of the UK's gross domestic product.

The next to get down on his knees and beg for mercy was Amitabh Bachchan. The answer to a question in KBC last week in which Nepal's august Lower House was called the Rastriya Panchayat amounted to contempt of parliament because it advocated a return to autocracy. Mr Bachchan has now promised to travel to Nepal at his earliest opportunity in the coming decades to conduct a training seminar for our politicians to refine their skills in becoming crorepatis even more rapidly than they are becoming crorepatis now.

And the third request for pardon came from the RSS which clarified that the external boundaries of India as depicted on a map in its official mouth organ was neither correct, nor authentic. The map's intention was to show that it is actually India that is under Nepal's umbrella and the entire subcontinent is a part of Nepal's Great Hindu Empire.

With these major victories and another national holiday around the corner, we can all go back to belching frequently in a loud and carefree manner.