Nepal Breakdown (devotional, political & personal)

Woman passed out at Pashupatinath. At the annual Teej festival in Nepal, women fast all day long in honor of the Gods who, in return, will bestow them with a happy marriage. On this day, thousands of women are waiting in long queues outside the temple to offer their prayers. But in the baking sun, and on an empty stomach, it was too much for this young lady, leaving the premises feet first.

© Morten Svenningsen

I mentioned before that things were starting to thaw up on the political front here. But with the recent developments, things are actually starting to get quite hot. Yesterday, the Maoists decided to quit the government, thereby throwing the future of Nepal into great uncertainty. They’ve announced new “people's movement” and “people's action”, no new “people's war” though. And they haven’t left the SPA-M alliance, the parliament or the cantonments either. Their list of demands, 22 points, most prominently calls for the immediate declaration of a republic and a change in the electoral system (proportional in stead of first-past-the-post). So where did that come from all of a sudden?

Well, it’s actually some of the old demands that they conceded last year in the peace negotiations. They’ve pulled them out of the hat again now, for what can only reasonably be interpreted as fear of the constituent assembly election scheduled in two months.

So either they’ve just recently come to the conclusion that kidnapping, torture and warfare haven’t won them that many voters (surprise, surprise) or they’ve just been playing tactical games all along, never intending to settle for a 'bourgeoisie democracy'.

Or is it just hard bargaining, bluffing with a four-flush?

Either way, it is a blow in the face of all Nepali optimists who believed the major hurdle was passed with the signing of the different treaties last year. Paper’s not gonna do it alone. The actual implementation of the various agreements is still proving much more difficult.

On a personal note, I’ve been rather stretched out lately, but I now seem to have straightened things out. And it’s not the same thing! My main computer went belly-up on me, but it’s now back in full swing with a fresh re-format and re-install. And with the monsoon easing its grip, it looks like the ever-accumulating maintenance work and oppressive weather is over. I’ve also decided to try and do my work a bit more scheduled, a plain 8 hours a day in stead of the manic-depressive cycles of enthusiastic working around the clock, followed by periods of what feels like waking through a dessert, banging my head against a wall (oh yeah, there are lots of walls in the dessert!). That’ll work for a while, but in the long run it just drives me towards a burnout and a breakdown. I, of all people, should know that.

Oh, yeah. My 300 first Alamy photo’s finally made it through to the online-status this Monday!

The wider scope of things

From the back seat of a micro-bus, driving through the wet streets of Kathmandu. The monsoon is still on here, but it's loosing it's grip fast now.

Life used to be so simple when I first got here. There were the good guys fighting the bad guys. The freedom fighters and the oppressors. With daily battles playing out in the streets. No question about it, that was the only story in town. But eventually the good guys won and the people that claimed to be their leaders came to power. Politics set in and everything became a blur. Now there isn't one story begging to be told anymore. Rather, there's a thousand half-cooked maybe's. Well, fine. I'll work on those. I like to do that. More low-key stuff, everyday life situations, root causes and all that.

But I'm no longer merely an outside observer. I'm knee-deep into it, it seems. Like everyone else here, I'm just another guy trying to run a business, a home, a little family, a personal existence and such. And the amount of maintenance it all requires, well, it's got me dumbfounded at times. These times in particular. Life just keeps throwing it at me. So as I was up there on our roof, trying to disinfect our 1000 litres water-tank and avoid the usual round of jaundice, hepatitis, typhoid, diorrhea, general gastric disorders and other water-borne diseases so common in the monsoon - or was it when I was standing barefoot on the muddy, steep, slippery hillside outside our house, rain pouring down, digging a water drainage channel and trying to prevent further landslide encroaching towards our house - I had these epiphanies. First, I just took pleasure in making myself better than the other foreigners living here, you know, those development consultants in their white shirts behind a desk or constantly driving in and out of the five-star hotels in their air-conditioned 4WD'ers which, of course, they aren't even driving themselves:

"Ha! I bet they never had to dig a side-channel in their bare feet, standing..."

(And this one of Aurobindo origin : "We don't need more committees. We need more committed people!")

But eventually I just came to realize that the scope of this whole operation that I'm trying to pull off is much wider that just "doing the stories". I've settled in here for a long haul and there's bound to be a lot of fringe work from time to time. Still, it eats away on my...mmmh...chutzpa, character strength, whatever it's called. Frustrations are flaming up. I wanna get things done, but the results aren't showing up as fast as I like. And then my computer breaks down. Reality is interfering, in fact, it's sticking it's big and ugly snout deep into my perfect freelance-adventurer-laid-back-
top-of-the-world-submerged-in-mysterious-oriental-affairs-
relaxed-summer-holiday-kind-of-life. Maybe I could draw a lesson from Hindu mythology, the wisdom of Krishna delivered to Arjun before commencing to the epic battlefield in the Gita, the essence being something along the lines of:

"Don't worry about the results. Just do what's right. The results will come accordingly."

So what's the right thing to do. Well, if you don't know, then figuring it out is the right thing. Luckily I know what's the right thing to do. I have my whole set-up in order and I have a plan that I believe in, and I just have to keep going. Keep pushing the damn circus-wagon ahead, as Sebastian sang. And accepting the wider scope of things...mmmh, used to be so simple.



And on a less personal-troubles note, the political situation here is starting to thaw up a bit. Nothing have really happened here since..., well, I can't really remember when anything important happened here last. Maybe when the Maoist terrorists/freedom fighters entered the government on the international day of practical jokes, April 1st! But like I said, it's thawing up now, helped along the way by three car-bombs in Kathmandu and the up-coming election that now seems unavoidable without considerable bloodshed. Two-and-a-half months away, the leaders are starting to realize that their lucrative positions aren't a given anymore. So one of the top guys, the home minister in fact, had the bright idea that all the existing parties in the parlament contended the election as one big group! A one-party election, what a democratic reform. Jeezez... But thankfully there's no way in hell that they could all agree on something that sophisticated. They're too busy with their own faction wars (NSP), hard bargaining (CPN-M) and personal disputes (NC/NC-D). It is ugly and it is sad to see history repeat itself. The spirit of 'letting the people decide' is pretty difficult to see. And this was exactly why it didn't work in the 12 years following the 1990 revolution that brought 'democracy' to Nepal for the first time. Well, at least the word. Hope they'll manage to bring something a bit more substantial around this time.

There's a lot more going on here, but I can't get into all the tiresome details at this time. My computer, now half-working again, should be back in full operation in a week or two. It's been a curse and a blessing to be without it for a while. I feel a bit disconnected from it all and it really slows the work down, to the point where I've just skipped a lot of it and taken more time to read, socialize etc.

Alright, over-and-out for now.