All of you out there who never seem to get tired of writing Letters to the Editor whining about how Nepalis are always breaking the rules, should understand once and for all that the reason we make laws in this country is in order to break them. How can we engage in the national past-time of breaking rules if there are no rules to break in the first place?
Nepal’s leaders promised 30 years ago that they would turn Kathmandu into Singapore within 10 years. Cynics, as is their wont, scoffed. Well, we are getting there. Just like Singapore, Kathmandu has come to be known lately as a “fine city”. We would never have earned that appellation if there were no rules worth violating and being fined for.
Nepal now has some splendid laws. The world’s best, in fact. But there is still a long way to go if we want to be a Middleman Income Country by 2030, and overtake the Pearl of the Orient by banning bubble gum and fining people who don’t flush the toilet. Never understood how they find out: are there hidden CCTV cameras in the throne room? Is there a motion detector in the biometric chips embedded in their buttocks? Being a Turd World country, Nepal doesn’t have to be so high-tech, we can just fine everyone for not flushing in Kathmandu because there is never any water anyway. The Loo Cops can fine everyone on the spot.
The reason we Nepalis break rules is because of the belief that our current passage through the worldly realm and our conditioned existence is transient, evanescent and inconstant. So the only way to bring us down to earth is to fine us here and now. If people pee on street corners they need to cough up a fine there and then (after using hand sanitiser) not in their afterlife.
It was foolish on the part of the Stay-at-Home Ministry to rescind the ban on jay-walking for human pedestrians. This means a huge revenue shortfall for the gobblement. We will have to make up for that by devising new fines as a deterrent against those who want to play by the rules. Here is a list of suggestions:
1. Fine the Secretary of the Election Commission for refusing to accept kickbacks for brand new vehicles when there were plenty of SUVs.
2. Fine the honest cop at the Kathmandu Intercontinental Ballistic Airport who doesn’t ask passengers to open their wallets to see if there any explosives inside.
3. Fine a weekly Smart Ass columnist who goes by his Latin nom de guerre, Equus asinus, for not grooming his nostril in full view of staff, thereby violating the National Code for Personal Hygiene of Bodily Orifices.