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The students have a lot to learn about the art of mayhem, and should take inspiration from the employee's union at Greenwich Hotel which, in a list of 17 demands to management this week wanted all employees serving more than 20 years be given medals containing one kilogram of gold each. That will be one helluva medal, and begs the question how the staff in the autumn of their lives intend to wear it around their necks. Besides, with the price of gold bullion this week crossing Rs 170,000 an ounce, and given that there are 25 employees who have served over 20 years, the hotel management will have to fork out $2 million to make 24 carat gold medals.
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So the Americans lifted the terrorist tag on the Baddies the very week that they (the Mau Mau) decided to let bygones be bygones and pardon themselves for all wartime atrocities. There is speculation about whether it is the Bracket Baddies, the Hypen Baddies or the Matrika Baddies that the folks out in Foggy Bottom decided are now not really terrorists after all. None of the three groups that swear by Mr Zedong have publicly renounced violence, and one wonders whether the Americans know something we don't. The Bracket comrades have called for a bund on Friday which they have warned will be "enforced strictly to make it a grand success" which is a euphemism for setting fire to motorcycles that dare to go out into the streets, vandalising unarmed taxis, and generally smashing anything that moves. The Hyphen comrades, not to be outdone, greeted the lifting of the terror tag by wrecking the bus of Delhi Public School in Dharan on Monday for defying their extortion demand, and admitted to the vandalism saying the school had an "Indian name". Guess the Kirkpatrick Doctrine is still in force: 'We don't care if they are sonsofbitches as long as they are our sonsofbitches.'
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So it seems the Euro envoys were given the runaround by the Farang Ministry, which forwarded their request to meet the Prez about the TRC bill to Shitall Nibas. But when Xenophobic Minister Kame Kazi found out, he gave his bureaucrats a tongue lashing. The media was summoned to publish a leak that the ministry had told the Europeans off, while the minister himself was reassuring the ambassadors that there was no problem. The Enigmatic Qazi, meanwhile, slyly got the Cabinet to reimburse him Rs 3.5 million in tax payers' cash for his spinal treatment in Japan.
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The govt in its infinite wisdom has almost decided to go for a five-day week and give Sundays off in order to reduce the demand for electricity, and shorten load-shedding to 12 hours a day in winter. Um, tell me how this works: Govt wants to reduce power cuts so we can have electricity to work, but wants us not to work on Sundays to save electricity. Besides, how is 15 million Nepalis staying home on Sundays to watch Hindi teleserials going to save electricity? The only way to completely remove load-shedding is to give everyone a three-month vacation.
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The final irony this week was that Baidya Kaka came to see Prime Minister Baburam ("I'm Not In Charge") Bhattarai in Singha Darbar and delivered to him a 70pt ultimatum at the exact spot where BRB himself had delivered a 40pt demand to Prime Minister Brave Lion in February 1996. Com Laldhoj must have felt a familiar sense of d�j� vu, especially when he saw that many of the demands were actually ones he himself crafted 16 years ago: ban Bollywood movies, stop Indian cars' entry into Nepal, recapture Kalapani, etc. A gold medal coming right up for Baidya Kamred.
