Nepali Times

To all of you whining and dining about how bad things are in Nepal these days, how feckless our government is, how hopeless our leaders are, how racist we have become, how repressive our police are, or how much you hate dal bhat, the Ass has only one message: if you don’t like it here, leave. Good bye. Wait, take me with you.

Hold it, though. After scanning headlines from around the world it looks like Nepal is not such a bad place after all. Compared to Yemen and Syria, the Serbia-Hungary border, Ukraine, or Lampedusa. If you are in a funk about Nepal, look at all the places that are worse off than us. 

You think you have problems with load-shedding? Try living in Aleppo. Concerned about a imminent blockade of food supplies? Go to Sanaa. Inconvenienced by long petrol lines? Go live for a week in Luhansk. So stop complaining already. Cry baby.

If you are cynical about our politicians, look at the shenanigans of leaders in other countries. US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proves that our civil society has a really long way to go in being uncivil. CA members who were most stubborn about not granting citizenship in the name of the mother should learn from Trump about how to be a master at passing sexist comments and casting innuendos about the menstrual cycle of tv anchors.

The city of Toronto had a mayor named Rob Ford who was caught on camera abusing substances, and when presented with the evidence said: “I was too drunk to know that I was snorting cocaine.” Our leaders get plastered all the time, but can’t even commit misdemeanours because they pass out.  

Even when it comes to personal scandals, Nepal lags way behind international standards. Yes, our Agriculture Muntri tried to grope a couple of women live on nationwide television during the Paddy Festival, and Comrade (“Son Also Rises”) Prakash maintained three simultaneous liaisons. But the most disgusting thing our politicians can come up with is Comrade Awesome picking his nose in public during the clause-by-clause voting on the new constitution. Which is why we as a nation are put to shame when it is revealed that the British prime minister committed porcine necrophilia while in college. #PigGate 

Did I hear someone complain that Nepal is politically unstable and has frequent changes of government? Well guess what, Australia is way ahead of us: they’ve had four prime ministers in two years while we could muster only one prime minister in two years: Jhusil Da. And the kind of name-calling that accompanied regime change in Canberra made our politicians look like Boy Scouts.

There was uproar and outrage when some CA members last year out of sheer boredom started throwing chairs around in the August Assembly so they wouldn’t fall asleep. We were outraged and called such behaviour ‘unbecoming of a parliamentary democracy’. But look at what transpired in the Japanese Diet just last week. The floor of the parliament building in Tokyo looked like there was an indoor rugby match going on, with members tangled in a scrum, punching each other in their faces. This was a violent protest about a pacifist constitution. When are we ever going to learn to behave like that, and catch up with Japan’s progress in democracy and freedom of expression?

You think Kathmandu pollution is bad? Try breathing in Singapore this week. And you think we cheat in our vehicle emission tests by bribing the inspector? Thank you Volkswagen for showing us how it is really done.