His ex-Majesty's birthday last week was marked by celebrations befitting an erstwhile royal, including a life-size cutout of Kingji flanked by two real-life flunkies peering from above the Nirmal Nibas gate. Was this a decoy? Fans and paparazzi thronged the palace but one well-wisher was told it wasn't such a good idea to come over. Chairman Awesome had sent feelers to KingG for a tete-e-tete over a bottle of Chivas. The overture was turned down for now because the media would have got wind of it.

***

Natural for the formerly royal to be wary. Reporters are keeping track of all the covert meetings going on all over town at secret venues. Siddarth Cottage in Dhobi Ghaut seems to be the favourite of the BRB faction, while the PKD wallahs prefer a private residence in Kumaripati and the KPO cabal of course just sits in Balkot. In fact the only news worth reporting these days is who secretly met whom and where. News of cloak-and-dagger gatherings of various factions of the Baddies, Kangresis and Eh-maleys are leaked to the press so that rival paranoid factions start imagining all kinds of goot bundis. In case future historians want it for reference, the Ass has compiled a list of who met whom this past week:

Sunday: AKS+PKD, CPG+DPG+TBR, BMP+RK+DR+KPKC
Monday: PKD+NKS, NKS+BRB, BRB+MBK, MBK+NKS
Tuesday: PKD+BMP+APS, BRB+RBT+NKS+MBK, PMS+PSM+SBD, RCP+RSM
Wednesday: KPO+MKN, SBD+PKD, RSM+RCP, MMS+Jhusil,

***

A cursory glance at the billboards along Thapathali prove that there is now a serious drought of names for schools in this country. It is a
national emergency, and if something isn't done the entire 10+2 industry may grind to a halt because of the shortage of brand new brand names.

Nepal's schools and colleges used to have names like they existed since the time of the Ramayana: Shanti Vidyapeeth, Adarsha Niketan. But they have moved with the times to name themselves after birds (Nightingale, Skylark), dynamite inventors (Nobel), dark beers (Guinness), wonders of the world (Pyramid) and even spy planes (U2). But with new schools sprouting every few hours, there aren't enough trendy names to go around.

In desperation, new colleges have become adventurous and started naming themselves after inland bodies of water (Caspian), exotic places (Caribbean, LA, Maple Leaf), New York boroughs (Brooklyn) and famous universities (Oxbridge). These schools immediately saw a spurt in admissions, so others followed suit with names of landmarks belonging to the US federal government: Pentagon, White House, Capitol Hill, NASA, Lincoln, Watergate, Golden Gate, Glacier. (Ass' footnote: None of these names are made up.)

With all terrestrial names now taken, colleges are going forth where no man has been before into outer space with schools named Cosmic and Galaxy, as well as heavenly bodies like Triton and Sirius. But the schools that are swamped are named after football teams (Chelsea, Liverpool).

In all the high tension excitement over the breakup of the Baddies, Comrade JN seems to have forgotten that he once promised to step down. In fact, the primordial minister seems so sanguine about being in Baluwatar for the
foreseeable future that he has accepted an invite from General Ban Ki Moon to attend the UNGA in New York in September.

***

Just when air traffic controllers at TIA thought all the potholes on the runway had been patched, the airport had to declare a Monkey Emergency. An army of rhesus invaded the runway just as the heavies were on final approach. At first, officials thought the monkeys were refugees fleeing simian purges at Pashupati. But monkeys have now been traced back to a breeding centre in Lele which let them loose last year after animal rights activists opposed their export to America as lab animals. The rhesus could have been staging a sit-in on the runway to demand Green Cards.