As Dasains go, this year's festive season had a somewhat somnolent quality. I don't know about you, but many of us logged 18 hours of sleep a day, waking up only to gnaw at a martyred mountain goat, belching frequently in a loud and carefree manner, chewing the cud by re-eating juicy morsels of aforementioned ex-goat picked out from between one's molars, plopping paans in the mouth, pocketing marriage winnings, turning over, and going back to sleep. I know what you're muttering: how is all this different from a non-Dasain day in the Ministry of Labour's Department of Idolence and Lethargy? Good question.
Research into the cicardian rhythms of an average adult male in this country shows that our sleeping patterns are essentially the same, Dasain or no Dasain. As citizens of a landlocked Himalayan ex-kingdom where the Buddha was born and that has never ever in its entire history been colonised by aliens from the Planet Voth, we have all had a nice long vacation and now, fully rested, we once more plunge head-first into the task of prolonging the political status quo and sine qua non, not to mention the quid pro quo.
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Once more this year, vegetable activists (some of my best friends among them) raised objections to the decapitation of buffaloes during Nepal's greatest carnivorous festival. They should perhaps be thankful that at least we gave up cannibalism not too long ago. Also, sooner or later, most Nepalis will be forced to become vegetarians over Dasain because at current inflation rates, a goat will be worth its weight in gold. We are still way behind the Americans who are expected to massacre about 30 million turkeys this Thanksgiving, equivalent to Nepal's human population.
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Those watching the body language of our politicos at various political tea parties this week couldn't help wonder why these back-slapping, jovial leaders observed laughing their heads off at each other's off-colour jokes, can't seem to agree on anything during closed-door meetings? And why, if the differences are so stark, they haven't strangled each other yet? In any other country, a self-respecting Maoist party never splits because the dominant faction physically exterminates a dissident faction in an internal purge before it can even break away. Could it be that our totalitarians are less totalitarian than other totalitarians?
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The differences between the two Maoist parties are manifested in leadership tussles of trade unions, fraternal organisations, and even on who should control the YCL. Former young commie, Comrade Sagar who heads the YCL's Valley Committee, has decided it is much more lucrative to go it alone when it comes to extortion because he can keep all the profits, whereas earlier he had to share it with the party. Communard Sagar has now set up the ominous-sounding Unemployed Youth Organisation Pvt Ltd, yes, the same one whose graffiti you see along walls all over the capital. Interestingly, though, the outfit is not affiliated to the mainstream Baddie party and it has been extorting the living daylights out of just about every business in town during Dasain. The Unemployed Youth is made
up of the biggest gangsters in town and appear to have eaten into the Comrade Chairman's own fundraising efforts which is why he is boiling mad. Worse, the Unemployed Youth are now extorting Casinos and other business interests in which PKD has a stake. It was bound to come to this: when there is no one left to extort the Baddies are forced to extort from cash-rich fellow-Baddies.
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Competition between Hyphen Comrades and Bracket Comrades has now spread to the diaspora. This is what Comrade Awesum had to contend with when he arrived on a mysterious trip to Brussels recently. His self-styled euro commie Red Guard were behaving much the way they do back home, threatening violence on comrades from another faction who appeared at the Chairman's press con. Tongues are also wagging about why PKD made a surreptitious side-trip to Paris and there is speculation at our Paris embassy that he may have gone there to patch up with a certain ex-ambassador who had a shoe thrown at him, and to agree to let bygones be bygones.
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Anyway, no sooner had we done with Dasain, and Tihar is upon us. There are workaholics among us who will insist on going to work in the coming week. Woe on such spoilsports, they need help. It's not that we are less lazy the rest of the year. But 'tis the season we can really let ourselves go by wallowing in sloth. But sometimes we lapse into exertion and toil. Vigilance. That is what is required, vigilance against anyone who works to end this political deadlock. Why resolve the crisis when everyone benefits from prolonging the quo vadis, or shall we say, the annus horibilis?
