It is when Comrade Pasang starts wearing a tie that you know it is only a question of time before the Maoists complete their transformation into a mainstream bourgeois party.

Perhaps that was the intention behind Gen Wilhelmsen taking Nanda Kishor and Gen Shiva Ram on a junket to Stavanger so they could let their hair down, as it were, and sort out some of the cantonment issues. One problem Jan Erik may have to take up immediately with his Russian UNMIN pilots is to get them to stop flying their MI-8s too low over the camps because the chopper wash is blowing off the flimsy Maoist tarp tents.

On a more serious note, where is the Security Sector Reform going, huh? Despite some hush-hush meetings between the generals and the comrades in past months, it looks like the Nepal Army has flatly refused to integrate guerrillas into the national army. Pity. Where would you get such a splendid bunch of battle-hardened soldiers?

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Now that kingji has sent out hand-delivered Dasain greetings, can his Dasain address to the nation be far behind? It may be asking too much and it would be totally out of character, but saying sorry would help.

We're getting rid of one king, but we've replaced him with Three Emperors. The way this triumvirate of bajes are carrying on, even this loktantricked Ass is nostalgic for the good old days when we just had one royalty to deal with. The way His Majesty Girjau was granting audience to NRNs at his Crown Princess' bash at the Annapurna with perfunctory namastes from his bejeweled hand, it was difficult to tell which one was Napoleon and which Farmer Jones.

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Girjau in his old age is not just getting short of breath, he is also getting short-tempered. Earlier he gave Peace Minister Poudel a tongue- lashing in the cabinet. Then he publicly blew a gasket in front of his centralized committee and tv cameras by telling his trusted adviser, Amareshbabu, to bugger off. "You're nobody," he thundered as the cameras rolled, "you're not to speak to anyone." The reason was Amaresh telling Bhusan on Fireside the previous day that he had such good connections he could fix anything. Who needs to bug Koirala's bedroom if you have Mr Fixit here?

Was the prime minister sending a message to India during the Shyam Saran visit through his public outburst at Amaresh? Is that why he also went to First Daughter house to meet the Chinese ambassador while Saran was still at the airport and get Sujata to leak that to the press? What's cooking at Mandikatar anyway? And how come a supposedly-republican daddy is so cosy with his supposedly-monarchist daughter? The Ass wonders if NOC and NAC are being parceled out.

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Whatever Shyam told the Three Emperors, it has certainly worked like magic given the way the triumvirate conducted marathon meetings all week to end their deadlock on electoral procedures. The two-hour meeting at Awesome's pistachio-coloured Nayabajar Durbar got so heated that passersby outside could hear the raised voices. The Fierce One tried to strike a relaxed pose by sitting crosslegged on his sofa, but Comrade Red Banner looked like he had been spanked.

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Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. That seems to be the mission statement of the unimaginatively acronymed NRN. They wanted free long-term visas for their retirement, now they want dual citizenship. People of Nepali origin should decide once and for all where they want to stay. Not that it counts, but the Ass' advice to the Gobarment of Nepal is to pay more attention to resident Nepalis than to non-residents.

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