Kingji was so chuffed with the royal welcome he got in Panauti this week that the erstwhile incarnation of Vishnu is contemplating a similar walkabout on Friday at Pashupati on the occasion of Shivaratri. Both royalists and republicans are reportedly readying rival rent-a-crowds. Wonder whose chants will be louder: "Raja au desh bachau" or "Gyane chor desh chhod"?

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Those of you who think that if the constitution will not be written in time a great calamity will befall the nation are wrong. It's actually going to be much worse than that. The international community will give up on us and then we won't be able to scapegoat India or UNMIN any more, and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. Our leaders have this amazing capacity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so the Jackass has come up with this drastic solution:

Since there is never going to be an agreement on ethnicity-based federalism, and this will delay the new constitution indefinitely, how about a ten-year moratorium on all Bahun leaders? Why are the indigenous and janajati groups just demanding control of federal units? They should be allowed to take charge at the Centre and in the higher echelons of all parties. This would finally remove the bickering Brahmin men (MKN, JNK, BDG, PKD, BRB, GPK, RCP, PVT LTD) who can't agree on anything anyway.

This is isn't as far-fetched as it may seem. It was implemented as the Kamraj Plan in India in the 1970s and capped the age of party leaders, allowing Indira Gandhi to come up the ranks.

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The South Asian Games may have ended but the SAG saga continues. Nepal finally showed the world that we are a warlike country by winning seven golds, all in the martial arts category. And even in the categories we did not win, we displayed our martial tradition by roughing up linesmen, and if there were no Malaysian women referees to beat up, then we beat each other up. Here is a tip for the next South Asian Games, let's get all those ayogya ladakus and start training them in wrestling, boxing, kabbadi, wushu, taekwondo and Nepal's new national sport of beating to pulp anyone who disagrees with you.

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The only non-martial art gold was in the marathon, which our athlete completed in a world record time of 1 hr and 59 mins. It was a world record because the Banglas laid out a course that was short by 5km. Sir Lanka (another warlike nation) nearly came to blows with the organisers in Dhaka because they had trained their marathoners to make a dash for it in the last 5km, but there was no last lap. At least we got to keep the gold.

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Nepal used to have a partyless-Panchayat system, then after 1990 we brought in a party-based democracy, the whole of last week we had parties galore, and now it's looking like we have a three-party dictatorship. Which means we don't have to worry about the constitution not being written on time, the three parties will just sit down and figure out a way to pass the preamble on May 28 and postpone everything else by a year.

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A media mogul is murdered in broad daylight in Kathmandu's Green Zone and the Home Minister continues with his China visit with the heads of all three security agencies. An unarmed traffic cop comes to the rescue while armed APF don't lift a finger to cordon off the area. If the ministers are not on foreign junkets, they are on domestic junkets. Not one, not two, six ministers including the prime minister choppered down to inaugurate a bridge over the Rapti on Wednesday. If the Ass had a black flag, he'd be out there flapping it about.

ass(at)nepalitimes.com