Baburam ("Demolition Man") Bhattarai is doing what he did best during the war: destroy buildings, blow up bridges, reduce neighbourhoods to rubble. Old habits die hard, which is why he finds re-building the streets he has demolished a much more difficult proposition. Having taken to the streets, BRB is looking like a reincarnation of Napoleon III who razed the old quarter of Paris to build the wide boulevards so as to foil any barricade protests. And just like Napoleon got Baron Hausmann to do the dirty work, the PM has got his own better half, Comrade Yummy to take charge of making KTM look like a war zone. The bonus, of course, is that the demolition work is keeping a lot of YCL busy and out of trouble, which is not entirely a bad thing because it is better that they are wielding picks and shovels than .303s and socket bombs. Over at the municipality, they have lost track of how much money has been spent on tearing down buildings so far, and all this flattening is being carried out by none other than communards under the conjugal leadership of Comrade Hatoda and Hasiya.

It doesn't bode well for the country that New Year 2069 falls on Friday the 13th. And a conference of astrologers this week predicted that because of the confluence of Jupiter and Saturn, the planets are not quite aligned yet for the promulgation of the new constitution. They have advised waiting till May 1, but to avoid the 27 May deadline because that whole week is completely inauspicious.

It looks the US and European visa bans are not a deterrence anymore for bund organisers. The blacklisted hired goons know they are not getting B-2 visas to the states anyway, so they figure they may as well indulge in todfod, dhungamuda and kutpit to enforce strikes. Muscles-for-hire have plenty of employment opportunities as there is a string of bunds scheduled for the coming month. If the Ass may just make a humble suggestion, instead of this piecemeal approach it would save all of us a lot of aggravation if they all got together and closed the country down and declared it officially out of bounds till 27 May.

This is probably the first time in global aviation history that a Minister of Civil Aviation has hijacked an airliner. Lokendra ("Comrade Schengen") Bista Magar commandeered a plane being readied for a flight to Phaplu to take himself and his boss Comrade Awesome on a hoppig flight across western Nepal this week. The guy is eligible to get immortalised in the Guinness Book of World Records, and we are waiting for the director of Loot to turn this into a movie. And when the media reported on the hijacking, Minister Loktantra first accused his detractors of being part of a "Bahun conspiracy against Janajatis" and then threatened to sack staff at Nepal Airlines and his own ministry for leaking the information. This is probably a preview of how a future Chief Minister of an ethnic federal province with priority rights is going to behave.

On Wednesday, Comrade Magnifico invited selected editors to his Lazimpart villa to thump his chest about what a "bold and courageous" step he had taken to send the army in to take over the Baddie camps. The irony of it all seems to have been lost on the man. PKD was trying to beat BRB's address to the nation on Thursday and hog all the credit for concluding the peace process. Awesome's main message was that he wants to be a directly-elected president, otherwise there will be no new constitution.

PICS: AMRIT GURUNG

Throughout the brief briefing, the Chairman was twitching more nervously than usual and glancing at his watch. Apparently he was late for a Special Committee meeting. Soon after he left, assembled editors were treated to a series of dramatic comings and goings. Who should sweep into the driveway but Excellency Jayant closely escorted by shadow Minister Amareso. Soon after, the Chairman returned. Obviously the "urgent" Special Committee meeting wasn't as urgent as the urgent meeting with South Centre.

What a coincidence: integration got a jump start after the visit of the Indian Army chief and his meaningful public statement "not to mess around" with the army. Barely had Gen VK Singh's Embraer taken off than our own COAS also started singing a different tune on integration.