The trouble with new year resolutions has always been that by 7 January of every year, since records started being kept, we break them and resume snarling at our slightly better halves, plucking our nostril hair in public, smoking five packs of ciggies a day, and getting a lifelong membership of the Nepal Bars Association where our favourite tipple is the Famous Grouch.
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The main drawback of new year resolutions and the reason they never make it to the implementation phase, is that they are not legally binding. There is nothing there in writing. And in the absence of a Letter of Intent that will stand up in a court of law, such resolutions are easily broken.
That is why this year the Ass has taken the unprecedented step of getting corporate lawyers at the Bhattarai, Bhattarai & Bhattarai Law Firm to draw up a Memorandum of Understanding with my unreformed self and got the document duly notarised by the Chief District Officer and signed by two witnesses who are senior civil servants in His Erstwhile Majesty’s Government that puts me under a contractual obligation to abide by the resolutions I made for 2014.
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The lawyers have sent me a draft of this iron-clad MoU and given the stiff penalties involved in breaking one or more of the terms and conditions therein, I will think twice before reaching for fags on 7 Jan.
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NEW YEAR RESOLUTION AGREEMENT BETWEEN I, ME, AND MYSELF
Preamble
WHEREAS all Nepalis great and small are entitled to earn karma points during their current passage through life so as to ensure reincarnation as higher primates (hereinafter referred to as ‘monkeys’) in their next incarnation; AND WHEREAS we consider that it is the interest of every citizen to enjoy the fundamental human right to make an ass of himself and/or herself in the course of the Gregorian New Year; DETERMINED to get intoxicated during the traverse by Planet Earth in its trajectory around the Sun of the exact spot in its orbit that it (the Planet Earth) was at 365 days ago; BEING DESIROUS of making amends for the perfect ass (hereinafter referred to as ‘donkey’) I made of myself at midnight of the 31st at the Radisson; BEARING in mind that there are 16 other new year parties where I can make a donkey of myself (viz: Bikram Sambat 2072, Nepal Sambat 1030, the half-dozen Losars, and the Inuit New Year); NOTING that although there is a case to be made for a moratorium on said new year parties; NOTING FURTHER that this country, however, needs to keep partying on since we no longer live in a partyless system; I HAVE resolved with myself during the 2014th year of the Birth of Our Lord to carry out the following reforms in my general behaviour:
1. I will get up every morning at 5:30am, jog to Tin Kuney, and be back in time for a breakfast of muesli, whole-wheat, and a warm frothy health drink which used to be the favourite of a certain ex-prime minister of a neighbouring country which starts with the letter ‘I’.
2. That I will stop picking my nose in public (or private) unless ordered to do so in the national interest by the High-Level Political Mechanism.
3. That I shall not cast aspersions during the whole of 2014 about the female relatives of motorcyclists who try to overtake me from the left while on the Pani Tanki uphill.
APPENDICITIS (A) A Court of Arbitration shall be established pursuant to the Preamble above to resolve any disputes arising from the non-implementation of The Resolution, or if they are carried out in a manner that is not in consonance with the letter and spirit of this agreement.
APPENDICITIS (B) This agreement shall be deemed to be null and void if the contractual party and/or The Publisher (hereinafter referred to as ‘The Sau’) decide to terminate this column in the national interest during the course of 2014.