A Citizens Letter to the New Prime Minister

Congratulation Dr. Bhattarai, to you and your family! We wish you all the best for the future. May you be a better leader than we hope, and are hitherto accustomed to.

I have no doubt that you shall find your term in office challenging and awfully frustrating. You now bear responsibility for a politically fragmented country that has lost trust in its leaders and has been robbed of optimism. These are times when grand decisions must be made with urgency and wisdom. A balance many consider impossible.

Having irreparably cast off the shadows of 240 years of apathy we find ourselves ill prepared to face what we were promised would be a better future. Years of wasted opportunity and petty squabbling have undermined the aspirations with which we poured onto the streets in April 2006. And while the political future of the present Constituent Assembly members will be determined in time, the future of the nation and all its citizens is under threat.

While we recognize that the tangles of the political system ensure that you will not govern us alone, you alone will be held responsible for the accomplishments of your administration. The moral obligation of the CA is the completion of the peace process and ensuring we have a constitution within the prescribed time. Anything less will be deemed a failure. Is that fair? I don't know. I wish it were different, but it isn't.

You, being an educated man, carry additional burden of expectations. We, as a people, keep telling ourselves that our politicians are fools because they are uneducated, and if only we were to have an educated person leading us, we could overcome the perils of these testing times. As of right now, you’ve become a symbol of what an educated Nepali can offer this wronged nation, and if you disappoint there is much to grieve over. Have no illusion, we will hold you to a higher standard than we have held your predecessors.

We hope you remember –what many forget –that you are a public servant. Through you were voted in by the few elected members, we the people legitimize you and your office. Your priorities are to represent the nation and its interest. The interests of you party, your friends, and yourself are and must be subservient. Keep in mind that the country suffers each day under the brutal incompetence of the system you now have the reins of. How best to ease that pain is up to you?

Also know this: regardless of how you govern us in the next few months, and what its consequences are, the resilience of the Nepali people will ensure we survive this political hurricane. We have endured much and are thick skinned to political belittlement. But when our patience runs out, it will give way to an anger that has shaped the course of our history time and again. When the dust settles we will hold each of you accountable for wasting our time, resources, and hopes. I only pray we act more responsible than you and your colleagues.

We don’t expect great things from you. We only hope you do your duty.
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and the Lucky winner is...

Nepali politics reminds me of a sport, but I can’t seem to remember which one.

Cricket? Nah, that’s requires integrity. How about Football? Nope, it requires team work.
Perhaps Tennis? No. Chess? Close but not quite.

Common on, you know the game. It’s based solely on individual push and shove. No team work involved. No scope for corporation. No give and take. Its requires very little skill and excellent timing.

Anything? Any idea? More hint? Okay.

Winning the game always gets you a handsome prize; which the winner flaunts in the face of the prize giver like an annoying child teasing its parents. Also, in all their impudence, the winner uses the prize to seduce other players into playing more games. More games mean more opportunities to win.

And the dance carries on. Push and shove till there is a winner. The winner gets a prize. The possibility of winning that prize lures people to carry on playing the game. All is dandy except for the person giving away the prizes. Every time there is a new winner grand spoils are doled out to the victor. Ever wondered where the money comes from?

I swear the name of the game is on the tip of my tongue. What is it?

Polo? no. no. no. Elephant polo? you’re just being silly now.

"Mother father swear"* it’s almost there. Yes.

Eureka! Eureka! Yes, I remember.

It reminds of musical chairs. That’s it. A selfish dance round chairs where the sole purpose is to eliminate the other players –by hook or crook –till there is only one winner. And the winner is rewarded handsomely by the prize giver –that’s us, the general public.

Except this is worse. Nepali politics is nonstop game of musical chairs that’s fixed. If you let me win this time, I’ll let you win the next time and in the end we all are winner. I apologize if I said Nepali politicians can’t cooperate? Thick as thieves the lot of them!

Like any fixed game there needs to be a show of competition to avoid suspicion. 5 point agreement, 2 point agreement, 7 point agreement followed by months of disagreements on the agreements already agreed to be agreed upon. He says this, shouts at that all the while confounding us till we stop caring. Yet, like fools, we give out Pajeroes and clear the roads for the prime minister. And the dance goes on.

If we move to stop the game they scare us witless with threats of incomplete peace processes and standing armies. And so the dance goes on.



* mother father swear- in desi lingo that is the most serious oath of honor one can possibly take.

Freaky Love Song of an Geek.

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I am addicted to you.
As if you were the never ending seduction of Facebook.
you open more windows into my soul
than Google has pages.

ages to come will copy and paste
our story in their lives and blogs
to unclog poetry-less hearts
reciting mantras in our praise,
Saying “these were love, real lover, true lover.
They skyped their amour through tentacle of time and space”.
Yes, we are lover, real lovers, true lover.
Indeed we have routed
through the precarious web of 1G, and 2G, and 3G, and 4G
In my nights and your days
And your nights and my days.

I promise to Explore
my way to you.
and if I fail I will follow
the trail lit ablaze by the burning fox
and it will guide me through the
tempting hoax of having won things I don’t want
cause all I want is you
I want to slide my fingers through the touch screen of your face
I realize your body has more apps than my soul has space
so I’ll save you
little by little in my lungs, and toes and knees.
And if I crash
Your one tweet can bring back my wits.
and in the off chance jealously hacks into my system and deletes you,
remember you are the password to my soul
and the secret answer too.

Its time to get ready for Christmas?