Last week's Cursing Festival in Parsawa has put Nepal on the [expletive deleted] world voodoo map. News that villagers gather around at holi to curse the [%$#@&] living daylights out of each other [foul language] has gone around the globe and made us the [PG18] laughing stock of the world [hee-haw]. All this bodes very well indeed for Visit Nepal Ear 2011.

Any publicity is good publicity, especially if it is free, in our goal of bringing in one million visitors. Also from next year we can start marketing the Cursing Festival as a major tourist attraction for the Tarai, in addition to Lumbini, Janakpur and Chitwan. Slogan: 'Visit Nepal and Curse All You Want'.

The way it's done is this. Villagers gather around and start casting serious aspersions about each others' mothers. They also put spells on their neighbours' livestock by shouting: "May your buffaloes die of diarrhoea." To which the neighbours reply: "Your son looks like a donkey." Ahem, that should be a compliment.

There are other Adults Only curses that can't be printed in a family periodical like this, and we hear the denizens of Parsawa are already practicing for next year's festival with some choice hitherto unused epithets like [deleted by moderator]. Our advice to the Aguwas of our Civilian Society is to bring the Cursing Festival to Kathmandu and stage a noisy rally in front of Singha Darbar.

***

Speaking of NTY 2011, congratulations to the Nepal Tourism Bored for getting the leaders of all 16 main political parties to sign a pledge not to have strikes and other disruptions in the runup to next year. Now if the parties could only show the same solidarity to write the constitution, we'd be home free. The Baddies were the last to sign because they were apparently haggling over the wording of the draft as if it was a binding international treaty. The comrades wanted to remove all specific references to "strikes, bandas and chukka jams", then finally relented, but wanted the exit clause "except in special circumstances" added.

NTB, to its credit, stood its ground and the Prachanda & Prachanda negotiations dragged on into the night with a final agreement on a compromise wording: "principally we will not affect tourism and tourism related activities during the campaign''. That saved the day and Awesome signed the document, shaking hands with his namesake. For such mediation skills, the Ass would like to nominate Prachanda Man Singh the Chief Negotiator to end the current political deadlock as well.

***

What's with this gate-fetish of us Nepalis. Awesome goes all the way to Dang to inaugurate a new gate, every VDC and DDC now sets aside enormous amounts of money to build gates, and the Ugliest Gate in Nepal at TIA needs a major demolition job if we are to give a good first impression to visitors. In fact, if we had erected schools and health posts instead of gates, this country would be well on its way to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

***

Kalibaba organised a nine-day yagya to restore the Hindu kingdom. The former physics teacher of ASCOL said he would self-immolate if Nepal didn't revert back to a Hindu kingdom. As usual, our current and erstwhile leaders all trooped off to be blessed: KP Bhattarai, Makunay, ex-kingji, but conspicuous in his absence this time was Awesome. Probably because kingG's supporters were chanting "raja au desh bachau" outside the temple while Khum Budder was offering a garland to His Ex.

***

The stress of his job is showing on the prime minister. Inaugurating a handicraft fair at the mandap the other day Makunay addressed the defensive minister as education minister, but the Ass can't figure out why the PM should mistake Bidya didi for Kusawahahahaha. And our Quote of the Week is from MKN himself at the function: "Women are not breeding machines, men should also demand that right." Could these gaffes have been the result of his speechwriter being on a UK junket?

ass(at)nepalitimes.com