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The gloves came off last week at the Baddie Cent Com when Chairman Awesome rounded up all his loyalists to gang up on his nemesis, BRB. Ugly Sapkota called him an "agent of Indian expansionism", and Shoethrower Kirati said he was "anti-Janjati". BRB retaliated first by raking up detractors like Comrade Haribold over the coals for past sexcapades. Then he did a Lenin and sacked the editor of Iskra (later reinstated) for deigning to edit his interview. When he was prevented from delivering his 11-page complaint, Rambabu cited Vladimir Illyich at the Moscow Plenum and dashed off a note of dissent for not being allowed to present a note of dissent. But it was all a bit rich for Com Red Flag to complain that his party was "undemocratic" and "not tolerating different viewpoints". Since when was his party known for tolerance and democracy? More than most, it is BRB who should remember dispatching people off to the Great Gulag in the Sky for simply for having a different opinion.
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The talk of the town this week is not that Comrade Ian is in town, but the post mortem of the Shaktikhor handover tamasha. Given the great event management talent that we have in this land, the program only started three hours late. The ex-fighters got so carried away with the excitement that they surged towards the stage, ignoring Gen Pasang's orders from the stage to remain in position. Most had raised families, and looked happy enough to have earned their Eagle Scout badges in the last four years. The ex-guerrillas performed karate chops and mass gymnastics to entertain the VIPs but Makunay and Ferocious looked distracted and tense. The reason: they'd had a pow-wow on the phone that morning when PKD changed his mind about the agreement to lower the PLA flag and hand it over to the PM and threatened to call the whole thing off. Lots of speculation later about who put PKD up to this: the Danes or Samrat, or both. Or maybe it was the severe dressing down the commanders gave The Supremo that morning about having let them down. Which explains why PKD had to replace the flag-lowering with the raising of red Valentine's Day balloons.
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The difficulty in making phone calls is also afflicting the prime minister who just can't get through to PKD and when he does, the connection keeps getting cut off. A lot of the distrust among senior political leaders these days seems to stem from the fact that they think the other guy is hanging up on them when it is just our ultra-primitive mobile phone system. Makunay has now got himself a smart phone so he can type SMSs and receive pushmail. But PKD doesn't have the patience to type on a phone, so he is not texting back. Maybe someone should get him a devnagari dictation software.
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Back at Shaktikhor, no sooner had Makunay finished his lengthy speech than the ambassadors all got up to go. The puzzled Nepalis looked at each other because the ceremony wasn't over yet. Then it became clear they got up because Com Samrat got up, and he owned the helicopter.
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At the yummy buffet that included five types of meat, Fearsomeness ran into Shutterbug Sood and quipped: "Aap kis media se?" Back came the retort: "Hum retire ke baad, shayad journalist hounga."
