One thing this week's oil price riots did was distract the public's attention from the fact that we have finally been able to see the first on-screen kiss in a Nepali movie.
Not that Nepalis don't osculate in real life. In fact, after ass-licking, paying lip-service is our favourite national pastime. But in reel life the camera in traditional Nepali musicals usually pans across to ducks in a pond when the time comes for the hero to deliver mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the heroine. There was the usual wolf whistling at Gopi Krishna, and some went twice to watch the "hot scene" in Kagbeni. But, for the most part, Nepalis took it in their stride and didn't get as worked up about The Kiss as they did with the hike in fuel prices.
What this proves is that a kiss is still a kiss. And the fundamental thing that is still unfathomable to the Ass is how come the Maoists, who are in government and hold five ministerial berths, agree to a hefty fuel price hike and then unleash their students to bring the country to a halt for two days to force a roll-back. Marie Antoinette may have said "let them eat cake" but our comrades want to have their cakes and eat them too.
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Which must be why Comrade Lotus Eater has continued his meetings with "nationalist royalists" and assured them that he is willing to let bygones be bygones. President Awesome met ex-minister Awful last week, and told reporters: "He ain't such a bad guy after all." Ass' prediction (you saw it here first) is that Sri Paunch President is going to meet Sri Panch Maharajadhiraj one of these days and the two are going to get along like a house on fire and swap roles.
A car in the presidential motorcade ran over a boy near Pokhara while the comrades were on their way to the First Son's wedding party. The whole thing was hushed up and the boy's family received six lakhs. Remind you of something?
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So Unmean has recruited the Brits to push through a widened mandate in New York. They should've talked to the Chinese first, because Beijing is livid that the document still treats the government and the Maoists as two different entities and puts ex-guerrillas at the same level as the national army. Besides, how is UNMIN going to take on all the added work with all the top level defections and resignations it has suffered recently?
All this Hindi-Chini-bhai-bhai may be a bit exaggerated, though. A week after a group of madhesi journos attended a junket in India, the Chinese took three tarai hacks to China. A yam between two stones.
And shouldn't someone be asking why we need constitutional experts from Kenya at this juncture in their history? Don't we have our own Daman Nathji? Do we really need Sudanese, Yemeni and Ecuadorean monitors when our own guys are doing such a great job in Afghanistan? Why do we want lectures on inclusiveness from a country where the election poster of a mainstream party depicts migrants as black sheep?
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With half-day power cuts, the worst sufferers are those who live in localities where there is no electricity when there is water in the mains, and there is no water in the mains when there is electricity. The fancy pumps they had bought to suck water illegally from the mains are useless. Khuching.
ass(at)nepalitimes.com
