The Rising Dollar

Except for our dear old Nepali Rupee, everything seems to be rising these days. Our Rupee is on a freefall and we can do nothing about it because we are tied up with the Desi Rupee.  So unless the Dosa wallahs do something to stop the Rupee from crashing further, we have no choice but to ask our relatives to send us dollars now so that we can buy some onions.

Maybe, we have to break free from all this pegging natak and just go for devaluation. Then we might be as worth as much as the Zimbabwean dollar. Yes, it will be a little tough for a while because you will have to get used to paying for a kg of mutton in lakhs and not a thousand or two. 

So if we were to go for devaluation, then a cup of tea will then probably cost a thousand Rupees and most of us won’t be blaming the doodh chiya for our gastric problems because we will be thinking twice before buying a cup at the local chiya pasal. 

Maybe half the population is lactose intolerant and they just don’t know it or don’t want to admit it or don’t really care. And the other half suffers from blood sugar problems. The Japanese have their Miso soup and it’s about time, we start our day with Sisno soup and be a healthy nation.

During the winter, we can even use our devalued bank notes to keep ourselves warm because the load shedding hours will only go up.  Our clowns and civil servants want us to help save Mother Earth by consuming as less power as we can, while they go around embezzling funds by buying faulty transformers so that we have even less power.

The CIAA is busy trying to get to the bottom of the Rs 410 million scam at Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA).  We should not blame our electricity wallahs. It’s the same old natak with nearly all government agencies. 

Nepal Police bought faulty Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) and we found some of our police wallahs and a few dalals guilty. But our CIAA folks could not find any evidence linking our former home ministers and other top freeloaders to the Sudan scam. And Lokman and his side-kicks will also not find any politicians guilty with the new scam either.

If Lokman really wants to be our ‘Superman’ then he should just go after our netas’ personal assistants. All we need to do is bring in the PAs and their black books. They must have a record somewhere. Either we have the smartest con artists in this land of ours or nobody has the courage to point the fingers at our clowns. 

Our corrupt civil servants and contractors are more than happy to spend a few years in jail and pay the fine than bring down our clowns. Hope someday, we will have a whistleblower or two who will help to disclose all the dirty little schemes our clowns have cooked so far to keep us down.

It’s time we do something to cut down our trade deficit. Why do we need to buy all them smartphones, automobiles, gold and other stuff that we really don’t need.  Why do you need a smartphone with all them features that you will most likely never use? 

And if our telecom operators continue with their network problems then it would be more affordable to train a pigeon to deliver your hand-written messages than trying to call someone for an hour or days. Or if you can’t find a well-trained pigeon right away then just walk to the other person’s house and talk to him or her. All the walking will probably keep you fit as well. 

We are getting hit by a big one soon. It would be wise to have your earthquake survival kit ready because your smartphone won’t be working then and there will be no roads to drive your SUV and you can’t carry your gold as you head to the hills to get out of the valley. 

But of course, we are not worried about any quakes right now. Some of us are worried about having to pay more for all them gadgets they don’t need while some of us are happy that our near and dear ones will be sending us more dough thanks to the rising dollar.

The only folks who can afford to buy a tola of gold are the ones who have their loved ones in the West. For the rest of us, we are left to worry with patches of mold in our household thanks to the monsoon. 

And some of us might have to sell the last tola of gold to get rid of the mold and maybe buy a sack of onions and a kg of mutton for Dashain because only our byaparis know what the price of them stuff will be by then.

So, if you have relatives in the West or the Middle-East or anywhere except the SAARC region, then better ask for your Dashain Dakshina now while the Dollar is hot and the Rupee is not.