As some of you go about your daily lives observing bandhs by staying indoors to learn more about the reproductive habits of wombats on the National Geographic Channel, there are others who have to keep the vigil and guard this country's international borders so that at the end of everyday every square inch of Nepali territory is accounted for.

Just as the male wombat will sprinkle anointed water on termite hills on the perimeter of his domain to mark out his territory, we too have to constantly guard ourselves against expansionist and hegemonistic tendencies in the vicinity.

But, geologically speaking, this is a losing battle. For the past 65 million years, Nepal has been progressively squeezed between India and China, a fact that King Prithvi Narayan Shah recognised when he coined the phrase: "Nepal is a Bazooka Bubblegum between two large molars."

The result of the Indian plate pushing us relentlessly against the Eurasian plate is that we've had no recourse but to go up. This was fine as long as it gave us the highest mountains in the world which we could climb 15 times without artificial oxygen, without thermal underwear, and clad only in flip-flops, so that we could land ourselves regularly in the Guiness Book of World Records. But at the rate we are being pushed and shoved, in another couple of million years, Nepal will be flattened to a thin zigzag wall about 2,000 km long, 20 km high and a kilometre across at our widest point.

There are indications that this process is already underway. In Nawalparasi district, which geologists call the zone of the Main Boundary Thrust (MBT) and under which lie numerous geopolitical fault lines, border pillars have sometimes been known to move northwards by as much as 500 m in the course of one night. Nowhere else on the planet is continental drift happening at such a rapid pace.

It is due to these tectonic movements that there are unconfirmed reports that the birthplace of the Buddha is creeping away from Kapilbastu, and at press time was located nearabouts Orissa. Another millennia or so, and we will probably be told that the Buddha was actually born on what is now the Indian Zone on Antarctica.

The more sharp-witted among you may now be asking: a) what is he trying to get at?, and b) why doesn't he get to the point so we can all go home, and watch the mating habits of wombats on cable?

My thoughts exactly. But I can't let you go without this last message to our seemingly unconcerned authorities about the wild elephant menace in Jhapa district. Press reports say dozens of cross-border terrorists disguised as marauding wild elephants have been wrecking havoc along the Lack of Control (LOC) plundering villages on the Nepal side. This calls for greater vigilance along both sides of our international frontier, that is if we can first find the border pillars.