August 5th ’07, sunny morning after a week of rain. Everything seemed just perfect. After relaxing on Saturday I was all set to go for work. I had walked from Mangal Bazar to Pulchok in the verge of finding transportation and well another bandh. All vehicles were stopped and the road just suddenly was empty. With no other option left, people had to walk to their destiny, complaining about Nepal’s situation, some wondering why there’s a bandh on the very day. There was lot of murmuring down the street.
This situation is not very new to us, Nepalese. These bandh happen so often that it has become part of our lives. We even start missing it when they don’t happen for more than 2-3 weeks. And we hear it in news or some other source that one Nepal Bandh cost the Government more than 1 million rupees. In spite of that nobody, I’ll stress on that absolutely NOBODY has been able to do anything about it. So who is to be blamed? The government, the people, Maoists, political parties, exactly who is responsible? If you ask me the question, I’d say all of them. And the irony of it is all of us suffer the same amount. May be there are ministers who are so pleased to see their bank balance that they’ve turned deaf, dumb and blind towards the country’s situation.
When you go around Kathmandu, and start noticing the dirt over here, it is more depressing than anything. Let us start with the infrastructure. The roads, OH MY GOD! Except for few ones, like around Durbar Marg, Kopundole and few others, the roads are so sick, they need immediate ICU treatment. Every time I travel in a public transportation, I hear people say or rather complain that there are so many cars and people and that it is not surprising to see the condition of the road. Okay so more cars more tax payment, more tax payment, the more money the government has to work on roads. When we think about this, WHY do we even pay tax if we have to travel on such bad road. Good question right? So where is all the money going? I wonder and am sure every Nepali is inquisitive about it. I was talking about bandhs earlier, the bandhs happen for so many reasons. Some party’s demand not fulfilled, someone got killed, increase in gas price and what not. I’m wondering why haven’t there been a bandh about constructing every road in Kathmandu. No matter which political party you are in, or whoever didn’t get justice, at the end of the day everyone has to travel around right?
I’ve still got lots to complain. Leave the garbage problem or the pollution, this problem has been around for so many years, people are tired of complaining about it so it is kind of forgotten. I’ll rather talk about how careless the government is and the future of all the Nepalese being treated like a trash. Have you ever encountered street beggars? These days it’s mostly kids who are not more than 8 or 9 years. Are they supposed to be begging rather than getting the education they are entitled. Oh forget about educating them, I think if they get a proper treatment that’ll be good enough. These children are exposed to greater problems. They get into smoking or worse drugs.
There was an interesting question in one of the blogs I read, if you were a terrorist how would you attack? Well, in Nepal it is so easy. I am not talking about placing bombs in certain places. Here is what I’ll do: I’ll go around spitting everywhere, throwing garbage just about any clean place I can find, get an old vehicle that needs servicing badly, drive so roughly that it might kill people, when caught give some money to the police and escape, open food stalls in any corner of the street and sell stale food. I can go on and on. So this is what I call terrorism, a civil terrorism. Once in a while all of us have sure done one of the things mentioned above. In someway we are hence terrorists. Unless the awareness hits our old stubborn minds there is no stopping. This terrorism is going to destroy our children, our homes, our streets, our cities and over all our country.
