So we bungle along somehow. Or, as the Sherpas would say, it's a 'hinji minji' state of affairs. The Ass would have advised fellow mules to make hay while the sun shines, but it seems everyone is already doing it.

They're all raking it in: PAC, NAC, NOC, GON, MOF. One of the ministers in the current cabinet has reportedly stashed away 50 karod in cash made through lucrative appointments, and the only honest ones remaining seem to be those who are a bit too dim to be corrupt. The latest WikiLeaks revelations indicate that a widebody minister was aspiring to an even wider body by spreading the wealth around. Still our muntris come nowhere close to the kind of graft and malfeasance exhibited down south, where bureaucrats are in cahoots with politicians who are in cahoots with journalists to make billions at a go on telecom and infrastructure contracts. India is growing at 9 per cent, while we are stuck at 2.5 per cent, so there must be truth in the theory that nothing gets done in this country because PAC Men sabotage every deal: MRP, GMR, Airbus, overhead footpath at Baneswor. (Even getting two bahun netas, Dahal and Nepal, to officiate the foundation stone-laying of the footbridges didn't do the trick.) The moral of the story: legalise corruption and let the kickbacks grease the economy. Graft is good for GDP growth.

***

The Maobaddies should stop speaking out in favour of UNMIN all the time, it hurts the UN's credibility and reinforces the perception that UNMIN had a soft spot for the comrades all along. Must be pretty embarrassing for Karin that the only guy who says anything nice about her is Comrade El Duce. As UNMIN gets ready to pack up, the Nepali staffers are all scrambling for jobs, but it is unlikely any of them are coming back to the NGOs or media they were poached from. At the cantonments themselves, the Special Committee team that inspected the containers last week was puzzled to find that they contain only guns and no ammo. We know ballots were stolen in the 2008 elections, but we didn't know they also stole bullets.

***

An American Indiana Jones is offering to buy up all the World War I vintage .303s in the cantonment containers and auction them off on eBay. If there are 4,000 three-naught-threes, and if they can fetch an average of $10,000 each ($25,000 for the muskets from the 1847 Afghan campaign), that should take care of the severance pay for all the ex-guerrillas who need to be rehabbed.

***

Just as the Radia Tapes in India have snared celebrity media personalities and exposed their wheelings and dealings with the high and mighty, it looks like Bibek Shah's book has also exposed some journalists on the take here as well as the names of Deep Throats who were leaking sensitive military info to the press during the war. (See p 224-5, 235, 241, 278, 391, 402 in Maile Dekheko Durbar).

***

The straw that will break the camel's back in the Battle of the Titans between BRB and PKD will be reports filtering back from New Delhi that Comrade Laldhoj has been meeting the Indian Foreign Sec, Finance Minister, National Security Adviser etc, when the Maximum Leader hasn't even got an invite back to Delhi. Paranoid as the comrades are about each other, this is sure to take the rift in the Baddies to breaking point. Which must be why the Fuhrer sent his trusted aide, Comrade Monsoon Man, along with BRB to Delhi to keep a close eye on who he met and what he said. But even more intriguing than all this is that the conference on Nepal is being organised by a shadowy fundo group that is extreme even by BJP standards, besmirching the good name of Swami Vivekananda. We'd heard politics makes for strange bedfellows, but we didn't know it was going to turn out to be a steamy group orgy.

***

First it was Nepal's business tycoons who all picked political parties and represented them in the CA. Now, it's Kollywood actors. After Rekha Thapa joined the maobaddies, and Manisha stuck it out with the rajabaddies, it's stuntman Bhuban KC's turn to be a Unified Marxist-Leninist. Sorry, Rajesh, you can only be a kangresi now.