Drinks are on the House
Ass
Since you are all still burping loudly from Dasain feasts while couchsurfing re-runs of the Clinton vs Trump debates on Saturday Night Live, I know you don’t really have time to read this. So I will be brief and get straight to the point.
At the rate our legislature and judiciary are transmogrifying Nepal’s socio-political landscape and finally showing that their members have the collective gonads and/or zygotes to not remain a rubber stamp body anymore, it is only a question of time before Nepal is declared a secular country where marijuana is legal because Lord Shiva smoked weed.
This is the beauty of living in a post-quake democracy: Parliament can be whipped to make any proclamation it wants as long as the three-party political cartel allows it to. In this slow-motion transition from the Tantrick Kingdom to a Loktantrick Republic, us good citizens can sit back and let the good times roll. Drinks are on the House.
But while fully applauding the audacious decisions undertaken by the August House this October, we do have some creeping doubts about whether the honourable members aren’t slacking off a bit asking for bigger allowances, bigger cars and a chance to make bigger asses of themselves. I speak especially of MPs of the Kangresi persuasion who refuse to bring the House down.
The main talking point in Kathmandu’s social circles this week wasn’t Lockman as some of you may think, but the rabbit that Prima-facie Minister Awestruck pulled out of the hat by posing with Chinese and Indian leaders in Goa. He is understood to have given both leaders invites to visit Nepal together (“No backing out this time, you two.”). And what was truly remarkable wasn’t that he made the triangular talks happen, but that he had deployed Comrade “Son Also Rises” Prakash for the Facebook photo-op. What he should have also done was taken a selfie and tweeted that in Hindi, just to keep up with @NarendraModi’s Nepali tweets.
The Donkey is privy to inside information that the meeting wasn’t a coincidence at all but a result of The Fierce One’s efforts to build Sino-Indian rapprochement for which he must surely be put on standby for this year’s extra Nobel Prize in case Bob refuses to receive it. As someone who once used dynamite to blow up buses, it will be appropriate for Comrade Terrifico to receive a prize instituted by Alfred Nobel.
For a guy who once threatened to invade India through tunnel warfare, the sight of Prime Minister Lotus Flower’s grovelling in Goa was a sight to behold. The Dear Helmsperson has come a long way from being persona non-grata to being persona non-grateful and it has taken ten years for the Chairman Fierceness’ roar to be a meow.
The other national accomplishment this week was that Nepal has climbed in the global corruption rankings of Transparent International from number 90 to 117. Now, some of you may think that is bad news. But it all depends on whether you are counting from the bottom or from the top.
And since in development circles in Nepal we have traditionally taken a bottoms-up approach on these matters, this is great news. We certainly got our money’s worth since we had to bribe them to be ranked higher in the Corruption Index.
And last but not least it is heartening to note that Tribhuvan Interminable Airport is adhering to its heritage of being a pasture by allowing livestock into the runway. Over Dasain goat ingress forced some aborted landings, adding to the thrill and excitement of Nepal being an adventure tourism destination.