One Day in A Generation

28^th Chaitra 2064

Ek Jug Ma Ek Din

I along with so many writers could be forgiven for shamelessly borrowing the above line from the late poet Gopal Prasad Rimal’s work for there can be no other line that depicts the situation we stand in currently, so remarkably. 28^th of Chaitra, 2064 will always live in our memory and in the history books we hope, for ages. The cliché we stand on the verge of history has never sounded so truthful, so un-cliché like, because that is where we stand today, on the brink of history. Whatever we do from hereon, history will always remember us, with a lot of admiration we hope, or sadly with a tint of disgust. As Nepal goes to polls today to draw up a new constitution, time has come for us to choose a path and it’s not your average path, the one that leads to your house, it’s a path that as a country Nepal takes. It’s a path that decides what sort of Nepal our children grow up in or if it remains Nepal at all.

And that was what I had in my mind as I headed to a polling booth early in the morning today. As I cast my vote, there was a clear sense within me that said I was participating in a momentous process of rewriting my country’s future course. And in the same time I was also fully aware that all I had done was add a drop to an ocean. In so many ways, as far as I was concerned, I was fighting a losing battle. While I was afraid that my minuscule voting power might have already been neutralized by a few imported goons or by the omnipresent YCL thugs by the time my ballot paper reached the bottom of the box, more importantly I was worried for there was no genuine political force that spoke my language. And worryingly still, like everyone else, I feel my ideology is in the majority. I’m, as far as I believe, a member of the always-used-and-never-seen silent majority.

So what is that the majority believes in (tongue firmly in cheek):

• One, undivided Nepal at all cost

• Republic, federal republic or a constitutional monarchy?

· Whatever the Nepalese people decide through a referendum or through a clear consensus

· In case of federal republic, federal states on the lines of geography alone. Nepal has so many ethnic groups and they among themselves have nothing in common. If the nation is restructured on the lines of ethnicity (or language; it’s the same in Nepal’s case) we will simply disintegrate.

• Respect for all ethnic languages, but the supremacy of Nepali language as the one and only official language be respected

• Stop rubbishing our glorious past and start looking towards the future. Prithvi Narayan Shah was and is the father of the nation and no one can take that away from him. Every idea, ideology has its period. When Prithvi Narayan Shah ruled this nation, it was the age of the kings. If you think monarchy is a thing of the past, well we’re talking about the past.

• Rule of law be upheld. No talks and compromises with thugs and thieves that want our Terai to be next Bihar. If you burn the national flag, you deserve to be hanged.

• State and religion be strictly separated.

Our First Post

Hello Everyone. We’re back. Ha ha, not that any one’s waiting, but still to the millions of cells of that part of our bodies that desperately wanted this blog to be back, well what can we say, they’ve got their wishes fulfilled.

So the Constituent Assembly election is finally happening, ain’t it? Its been a very long wait, but it should be worth all the delays and the trouble we’ve had in the interim. And hey did anyone tell you its this election that is going to determine the future of our nation and even our past. Yup, you heard it correct, EVEN OUR PAST. Looking at the alarming frequency with which we’ve been rubbishing our glorious history, we could see a wholesame change in the history books our children study in years to come. My favorite would be the revealation that it was not Prithvi Narayan Shah who united the nation, rather it was some communist hero. Mr. X, great great grandfather of our soon-to-be president Mr. Prachanda who did all the hard work. Prithvi Narayan Shah simply locked him up in jail, oh wait! HE SKINNED HIM ALIVE! (keeping with the new found knowledge of king Prithvi’s cruelty, this seems more appropriate) and rewrote the history books. And guess what, Mr. X was a Maoist and even followed Prachanda Path.

Hey wait, before you ridicule us for our claims and try to look for logic behind the above lines, just look around you. Does anything anyone says make any sense? This, my friend is Nepal and as long as there are people like us, well logic can go to hell. If Prachanda can be Nepal’s first president why can’t his great great grandfather be the father of our nation? And still if you don’t believe me, wait until you hear this same story from one of your children or grandchildren someday.

Good day!