Don't leave home without it

Our ‘visionary’ netas need to take a class or two at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before they hop on a plane and enjoy their foreign junkets or else they might get stranded at some foreign airport. The Tourism Minister should have taken a sack full of ‘Visit Nepal’ brochures and posters along with him. He could have done us all a favour if he had used his ‘free time’ to distribute them to foreigners at the Abu Dhabi International Airport.

Let us all feel sorry for his personal assistant (PA). PAs run the show here in Nepal. If you are one of them ‘great’ businesswallahs and need to get your file moving then you better make him or her happy or else you might never get to meet the minister for some chiya-paan. And then you can’t make a deal until you get to share a cup of tea and ‘greasy’ snacks with the thulo manchey ni.

The Minister blames his PA. The PA blames the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wallah. And our sarkari hakims are probably falling off their chairs and having a ball hola. The mantri should not be rough with his PA. If he really wants to punish his personal slave then just deport him to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they can teach him a thing or two about visa notes.

As the bideshis used to say back in the days, “Don’t leave home without it”…better check your passport to make sure you got that visa thing stamped in it kya and for the traveller’s cheques..well our mantris get ‘free’ money from the dhukuti anyway.

An ordinary citizen with a green passport will probably get harassed by our immigration folks at TIA even if one has a genuine visa. If you carry one to Europe or Amrika then they will first try to get some dough out of you, if that fails and they can’t do much then they will bless you like your elders and wish you success as if you will be making a million dollars in your first year in North Amrika.

The Ranas left the building many years ago but they do seem to inspire our netas to act like them when they finally get to the former Rana palaces and play ‘Maharaja’ at their respective ministries. I think they tend to forget that the world has changed quite a bit in the last 60 years. The Shree Teens had their huge entourage when they travelled to Europe. Our mantris may not get the same privilege but they still seem to think that the foreign trips are nothing more than some quality time for his or her own family.

Talking about quality, our minister is not too happy with our media wallahs. He blamed them for making fun of him and is concerned about the quality and accuracy of journalism back home. Well, the bideshis are not that great either. There are no WMDs in Iraq and the late Bin Laden was busy watching ‘Indian Idol’ in Pakistan. At least our patrakars didn’t make up a story about who got on a wrong plane and ended up in Finland or something. Okay, the minister was not detained and maybe he was given the royal treatment at the immigration office but if he is a politician then he should be able to spin the truth ni.

Maybe our mantri was just trying to see if he could get away without a visa like he did at our own international airport. Maybe he was just checking kya. Or he can now give free visas to all UAE residents for treating him so kindly. He finally got his visa and we hope he enjoys a frankfurter while attending the tourism fair in Germany.

The AFC Challenge Cup has begun and we are off to a bad start. The Palestinians beat us 2-0 and maybe it’s about time we let our ‘great’ strikers go home and get some young blood instead. You can’t win a game without scoring goals. Dr Saheb could have helped us to win the match if only he had talked to the Palestinians about how he had supported their bid for statehood at the UN ni. The Palestinians would have gotten all emotional and would have let it slide for once hola.

The Chinese did us a favour by giving Rs 50 million for the maintenance work at Rangasala. They even gave us a 500 kb generator so that we could finally conduct games under the floodlights. They should also have also paid for 5,000 tickets for every game and given it out to passionate football fans who can’t afford the price hike by ANFA. Where are our Student Unions when we really need them?

Where is the GAS?

First of all, let us all pray for the victims of the NOC bomb blast and their families. Our Home Minister is busy preventing political pressures and implementing zero tolerance policy on police corruption that he has no time to formulate security measures to prevent such incidents.

I think our ‘Homie’ has been quite successful in his attempt to reform the police force. He has resisted pressures from other political parties to transfer or promote senior police officials.

Well, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had fun moving them police wallahs around. He gets to pressure them all by himself, kya.

And yes, our traffic police wallahs are less corrupt nowadays since they get a cut of them traffic violation tickets issued to those who refuse to wear the seatbelts, ignores the overhead bridges or happens to drink a peg of whisky at his friend’s wedding.

Our APF wallahs have already learnt how to make a few dinero from the border checkpoints. Our cops still get free apples from the fruit sellers, free recharge cards from the illegal parking operators and free booze and snacks from the late night joints in town.

Our government would rather spend our dough on their own cadres, contractors and cousins than use some of it to strengthen our intelligence units.

I think our intelligence agents could get more reliable information from the local chiya pasals and bhattis, but thanks to our policewallahs, everybody has stopped drinking after 8pm and most of our chiya pasals don’t have cooking gas to make them special chiyas.

Finally, we have some ‘smart asses’ at NOC who have decided to introduce consumer cards so that we can all get some cooking gas.

Not all NOC employees are corrupt but all of them from peon to the hakims seem to have rich in-laws or come from ‘hunay-khaney’ families. No wonder, all of them employees seem to be loaded.

You and I will get them ‘red card’ rey, and the businesses will get the ‘blue card’ but I think our NOC officials would have done us a favor if they had issued a ‘white’ card to all politicians and hakim sahebs. Then we would have matched the colors of our national flag, ni. Red, White and Blue!

White cards will get our netas cooking gas within 15 minutes of calling the NOC hakims and they don’t even have to pay for it. The national dhukuti will cover it, kya. This is what happens when a bunch of freeloaders get to run the country!

NOC plans to sell them cooking gas at cost price to businesses and the profits will then help them to provide discounts to students and needy families, rey. We all know how the system works.

The real students and needy ones will get nothing while the political chamchas and cousins will get ‘cheaper’ cooking gas.

While we have to stay in line for hours to get a few liters of petrol, our police wallahs and personal assistants of our politicians can just cut the line and fill up their tanks. Talking about personal assistants, let us all feel sorry for Mr. Yadav, the PA to our State Forest Minister.

The fool got caught red-handed while receiving bribe at a restaurant in Anamnagar. Somebody forgot to tell him that our intelligence agents are all busy drinking lemon soda and having chicken chowmein at all them food joints around Singha Durbar. Nobody really gets caught taking bribes in ‘New Nepal.’

He must have really pissed off someone at the Forest Ministry, hola. I guess he forgot the mantra of ghooskhori jadoo! ‘Sharing is caring,’ ki ke bhanchha ni.

Dr. Saheb wants to wrap up the road widening projects in the Valley even though there is no budget or coordination among them NEA, NTC and Sadak Bivag wallahs, rey. Somebody needs to remind our ‘Smarty Pants’ that his job is to wrap up the Peace Process and give us a new Constitution.

Yes, we do have a little bigger (and dustier) roads now and we will have more traffic jams because we, the pedestrians, will now have to compete with all the micros, tyampoos and bikers to get to the other side, kya.

On the bright side, we may have no security (all police wallahs have been deployed to guard our VVIPs and sarkari offices!) and no cooking gas, either, (party palaces and politicians get first priority!) But let’s all be proud and drink some Guinness because we now have the oldest, shortest man on Earth and two adventurers have won an award for being the greatest adventurers of the year.

We can learn a thing or two from Sherpa and Sunuwar. Yes, we don’t need a budget to get things done; but unlike our government agencies, we do need coordination and team work, kya.