The ‘Xi’ effect

The Chinese President was in town and we got ourselves a few repaired roads and a temporary grassland in Tinkune. Maybe, our government should invite world leaders every other week and we will probably get done with potholes and cracked roads in the city. Xi was here and it was for less than 24 hours. 

If our government was creative and really wanted to promote Nepal then Xi would not be holed up in a five-star hotel. We could have taken him for a mountain flight or even better, breakfast with Oli at Everest Base Camp. Then, we could have asked him to tell his people to visit Nepal in 2020 instead of France, America or other western countries. We could even beat the target of getting 2 million passport-stamped tourists in our land. 

Xi was in India before he dropped for a quickie in Nepal. The Chinese have now invested billions of dollars in India and the Indians have also invested in China. And they both know that our incompetent politicians and chiya-kharcha seeking civil servants have not done their job to uplift this country and its people. 

Our politicians still think we can play the ‘India’ or ‘China’ card against our chimekis but the rest of the world knows that India will always be a major player in our domestic affairs and China has accepted that as well. But our ignorant clowns never do their homework and we fail to get a good deal with our chimekis. 

Our communists look at the Chinese Communist Party and dream of an one-party rule but what they fail to realize that you can’t do that unless you bring an economic revolution in this country and our youth can make a living here instead of going to foreign lands to earn a few Dinars and Ringgits. 

And when it comes to corruption, the Chinese are different than the Indians. They either send them to jail for life or end the person’s life. We are lucky that we do not have capital punishment in this land because if we did then the innocent common folks would be sent to death while the corrupt would continue to have fun.

China will probably take over the world in the next twenty years. India will be an economic giant but will have to deal with inadequate infrastructure, poverty, religious and caste conflict and freely roaming animals on the streets. If India wants to catch up with China then it has to invest heavily in infrastructure and handle its internal conflicts with care. What about us? 

Well, we have to deal with our lawmakers who are actually lawbreakers themselves. Our lawmakers are getting arrested left and right for sexual assault, murder, extortion and other illegal activities. We have no one to blame but our political parties who have sidelined their own honest and hardworking cadres and have chosen slimy contractors and criminals to represent the party in the House.

We have new Ambassadors sworn in for Australia and Spain. What can we say about our government when it goes against the recommendation of its own Ministry of Foreign Affairs and appoints people with no diplomatic or government experience. If you are above the age of 35 and have an undergraduate degree, no criminal record and conflict of interest then you are eligible to be our Ambassador. 

The person who will be heading to Australia is a Dahal. Nothing against all honest and hardworking Dahals in this land but Prachanda is giving your clan a bad name. Winter is coming. If our Emperor had his way then most of the top positions in our government agencies would go to his cousins and cadres. 

And our new Ambassador to Spain is Dawa Futi Sherpa. She is the daughter of late Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, the first Nepali woman to climb Everest. She meets the bare requirement but it helps when your family is worth billions of Rupees and is close to Oli Ba. 

Nothing against Dawa but all she can do in Spain is to visit the office of Barcelona FC and probably invite Messi to play a minute or two of football in Everest Base Camp. We should have sent her to the US or some other European countries and she can promote Nepal and especially target a package to those who want to climb Everest. And her relatives own Yeti Airlines and other reputed tour and travel agencies. 

Would it be a conflict of interest or maybe that would help us bring in an extra million high paying ‘climbing’ crowd? There is nothing wrong with sending byaparis and near and dear ones to foreign lands as Ambassadors. The Amrikis do it. Many major political donors, who are mostly byaparis there get appointed as Ambassadors. So maybe we are just following the ‘US’ model instead of the Chinida model where they send the best of the best to represent their land as Ambassadors.

And the future King and Queen of England are busy visiting Pakistan. Where did we go wrong? We got Harry while his big brother has no plans to visit our land. I think we are getting disrespected by the House of Windsor. This is what we get for more than 200 years of loyal service to the Brtiish Crown by our brave gurkhas?  

I think Prince William only wants to visit places they have colonized. If Prince William had an ounce of respect for the Gurkhas then he should visit Nepal with his Mrs and tell the Brits to ask 2 million Brits to visit Nepal as an appreciation and remembrance of thousands of young Nepali men who lost their lives fighting for the British Empire in the two major world wars.

Suraj Vaidya dai should visit the UK, India and Singapore and play TV ads there saying ‘The Gurkhas have saved your ass and now it’s time to move your ass and visit the Land of the Gurkhas’. Suraj Dai can bet the target if he does that! 

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com

All Good Things Must Come to An End

Let us all wish each other a very Happy Dashain and hope that someday Good will finally prevail over evil in this beautiful land of ours. This Dashain has started out with a bang and for us Nepalese, politics is like our national sport.  India loves cricket. The British love football and we love politics more than we love each other.

Everyday, politics is front page news while the rest of the stuff that happens in the country is ignored. It seems that we have more politicians per capita than any other nation in the world.  And it is only our public servants who seem to make the moolah while we can’t even afford to buy onions this Dashain. And every thirty years, we seem to change the players while the system fails to get updated. 

Maybe time has come for us to ignore our politicians and not give them any priority in our media and in our lives as well. Let us not be pissed off at these buffoons and ruin our day. We should just keep on working hard and taking care of our family instead of bitching and whining about our chors and their nautanki nataks.

Mahara Dai started out as a school teacher in Rolpa and is probably the most luckiest Maoist ever. This man liked to keep quiet and enjoyed hot ministries be it our Home Ministry, Finance, Communicaton and was recently our Speaker of the House. And then he forgot all about it and screwed it up. He still had good decade left to have fun in Nepali politics but it now seems that this man’s time to enjoy the freebies is over. 

Where are our women activists and women politicians today? Why is Nepal Police silent? Just because there is a consensual relationship between two adults,  it doesn’t mean that the concerned authorities look the other way when violence and sexual assault take place. But this is Nepal and the thulo mancheys can do anything they want and get away with it.

Mahara Dai should have taken a ministry this time as well instead of becoming the Speaker of the House. Then he would have been busy wheeling and dealing with the Chinese and other byaparis. But he must not have much to do with his current position and had to get out of his government residence and visit his friends elsewhere. 

After all this is the man who once asked a Chinese byapari for 50 Karods. And let us not roll our eyes because 50 Karod is chump change when it comes to buying votes here and there. Yes, politics is expensive and you need notes to win votes so that you can make more once you get to sit on that Kurchi.

Mahara was a school teacher once. He could have done better but like most of our Maoist netas, he too turned out to be just another guy who got swallowed by the corrupt system instead of changing the system itself. His students have become mantris and speaker of the house and hold influential positions inside the party. But the teacher has failed us all. Why are our public school teachers in love with alcohol, guffs and politics?

Most of our politicians are either school teachers, byaparis or lazy bums who made it good by fooling most of the people in their backyard. Our Maoist netas were supposed to change the system but they seem to have fought a decade-long People’s War to change their own lifestyle instead.  

Let us hope our comrades will look back at those pictures when they were scared and not sure if they would make it alive after waging a war against the state. Look at those pictures where a simple meal of baasi bhat in dingy plates was enough for them to lead their movement. 

Look at them yesterday. They were skinny, wore old clothes and weary shoes. Look at them today. They are fat, have rosy cheeks and wear suits worth lakhs, wear watches worth tens of lakhs and live in houses worth Karod. So was this what the Maoist dream was all about? So was this what Mahara taught his students and inspired them to leave their schools and join the Maoist movement? 

At the end of the day, we all know that an assault took place. The lady may now deny everything and tell the world that Mahara is like her father but father’s don’t  show up in a daughter’s room, with alcohol in hand and then drink the alcohol and assault his daughter. 

Mahara still hasn’t finished working on the hisab kitab his party needs to submit to the government when they took all that money in the name of their combatants. Now, he has all the free time and can finally submit the financial details of where all that money went. The question today is not about what Mahara did or did not do. The question we need to ask our politicians is to at least have some respect for the office they occupy. 

We have our mantris acting like bouncers. We have our cadres acting like wild savages. We have those in power wanting more and more from the state treasury while the rest of us have not much to give anymore. We though the Maoists would change this nation for good but they have only changed themselves for good. 

Mahara Dai, it is not too late to apologize and seek forgiveness. You have already enjoyed the fruits of politics. Enough money has been made and your sons are well off as well. 

Now it’s time to become a mentor. Leave politics, be a good teacher and maybe teach your future students that we all make mistakes but we should also be held accountable for it. And who knows, you can inspire others to not make the same mistakes that you have made. 

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com