Manu Brajaki is one of the most interesting short story writers today, playing with Nepal\'s mixed languages, pulling together disparate urban and rural subjects, and deftly managing the conflicting demands of art and political commentary. The story below shows off his brisk and bracing style, depicting without sentimentality the day-to-day quandaries of a Kathmandu every man. More of Brajaki\'s work can be read in his collections Timri Swasni ra Ma. Aakashko Phal. and Bhavisya Yatra (from which this story was excerpted).

The weather will be clear today and tomorrow

Nepal Radio-ears!
Nepal Television-eyes!
Sri Nepal Video-brains!
Having a video deck in each house of a developing country is a matter of civil rights. I\'ve finally discovered that once you have eyes and ears, you must have brains to think, reflect and develop.

To jiggle the brains a friend ordered yesterday, "Bring a partner! Well watch a new kind of film in a completely new way. At one-and that\'s a.m., not p.m., you lout."
Since my own wife isn\'t here, I arrived alone. The video had already started. Bimal came out when I knocked. "You\'re alone?"

"Who could I bring?"

He beckoned reluctantly. "Never mind, come."

A blue film was being screened. As with yellow journalism, there\'s no Nepali term for blue film. How can there be a name without a lineage? Though there will be a lineage now: our priests won\'t lag behind in performing naming rituals. My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the room. There were four couples there.

The science of sex was being displayed on the video.

Ail four couples were kneading each other.

With each man was someone\'s own sister, wife or mother.

I regretted my mistake. I could have arranged with New Road\'s middleman to bring Harimaya. She\'s an inexpensive whore, she would have been ready for twenty-five rupees. But the problem is, that whore lacks this kind of progressive ness. She needs seclusion, she needs the lights switched off.

I went out, my expression souring and my mind clouding.

When Bimal opened the door, he said. "Leaving, bastard traditionalist? Look, Sabita\'s calling you."

I didn\'t stay. I left, thinking of Sabita. This time she\'ll surely pass her BA.

It\'s truly a matter of civil rights to keep a video deck.

If a Gorkhali can keep a khukuri, why can\'t a Nepali keep a video deck?

But who am I asking this question to?

Catching a Japanese bus I reached Nepal, meaning Ratna Park, and when I emerged from a stop at the public toilets, the usual blind Gorkhali was singing his usual hymns, asking for money. I thought of giving him some change, but didn\'t. Bimal had called me a bastard and also a traditionalist. Ah, I must become progressive now. I mustn\'t be a humanist. 1 mustn\'t exhibit the arrogance of the rich by engaging in pity. So I gave nothing. Let him keep shouting, that ass of a blind Gorkhaii. Nepal\'s are now watching videos in a new way. but this one, he\'s singing the same old hymns, begging for alms.

Pity is a hateful thing. So I cast a loving glance at a girl standing with a basket full of cucumbers and an upright knife. I gave a bill and received a cucumber slathered with salt and pepper. I didn\'t ask for change, she didn\'t give it. There was a rush.

To one side was a policeman-dai. Policemen aren\'t called bhai, since younger brothers don\'t have the right to mete out punishment. Such is our custom.

I had wanted to sit in the park, but I bought a newspaper and scanned it. There was some support, lots of opposition. I thought of the editor. He bore no opposition towards anyone. When you oppose, you\'re considered a journalist in front of the world. Also a leader. You become Gandhi and Lenin. Gandhi had said, "You must accept rods and bullets without uttering a word." Lenin had said, "You must give rods and bullets without uttering a word." I had said...what had I said? Ah: "The bamboo used for rods and the lead used for bullets must be offered to the gods, in the place of flowers." How philosophical I had become! Leave all this; in a park, one must fall in love. I looked ahead of me. There was Bir Hospital, where one might courageously give up one\'s life force.

In all my life I\'ve never fallen in love and so I\'ve become an idler. A eucalyptus tree to the side smiled nakedly. In one corner of the greenhouse, a sneaky boy opened his drawstrings. On this side, a dark southern man stripped a pale northern man of his purse. This is not a poem.

Five years ago, Kabita had said, "This won\'t do: either become a communist and go to Russia-China, or become Congress and circle India-America, or become a Pancha and erect a building right here. Only then can you come to nudge at me." Neither is this a poem.

And so: in front of Kabita, I stayed an old man with my hands and asked, "Old father! Are you a communist\'" "No, son."

"And are you Congress?" "Um...no."

"You\'re not a Pancha?" \'\'How can those like us be Panchas?"

For over an hour, I held onto Kabita\'s arms and asked five other people these same questions, but none called themselves these three things. Swelling like a rooster I said, "You see. Kabita darling. I\'m on the side of the majority."

"I don\'t need your hungry, naked and hick majority. A!! over the world, it\'s the minority who has fun on the seat of power. You\'re a goat sitting on a bench, till Dashain. Now stop complaining, I\'m leaving, bye-bye, ta-ta,"

Within five years, the minority had squeezed Kabita dry of all her fun and tossed her back in the ocean of the majority. Yesterday I saw her with a driver boy at unsightly Baudha, this side of scenic Gokama. She was asking for fifty, and the driver boy was swearing by his religion that he couldn\'t go above twenty. The majority takes pity. The majority will always give at least twenty.