The Time of the Halis

Loved this picture: http://kantipuronline.com/

There are news of violence coming from literally every corner of the country, in some places forcing local authorities to clamp indefinite curfews. And there are Hillary-style whiners, mainly from the Maoist party, including our own I-deserve-the-defendant-seat- in-the-ICJ-but-I-will-have-the-bhitte-Presidency-instead Prachanda (Seriously, if a loss is going to be unacceptable to you, why the &%$# are you contesting anyway?).

But beyond all that, the parties that played cool all along continue to do so. Our pitri Prime Minister, local news say, is in Biratnagar to take blessing from local goddesses before embarking on the election campaign. UML's General Secretary for Life, Madhab Kumar Nepal seems unaffected from all the violence going on around the country, including in his own constituency (reason obviously: there is someone else he can blame, if necessary). I just haven't seen the seven political parties more relaxed than they are right now (well, the 'cadres' are fighting, but who said anything about the 'cadres' being a part of the parties?)

Coming back to the picture....People who speak eloquently about national and international issues, or have written hundreds of pages on national development (albeit most of it being some garbage on the communist ideology), have created enough mess in the country (look at Kamal Thapa or Baburam Bhattarai, for example). May be we need more hali netas, netas who may have no clue what's beyond Thankot -- heck, we could even get some inkpad for lyaapche if they can't read or write -- but live close to the Nepali people than to the dead (read: Marx, Mao and Mahendra). The tricky thing though is that even the hali netas may be deceiving sometimes, for example, when they don't seem to know that a halo is useless without a faali (check out the picture).

P.S. -- faali is the metal part that actually ploughs the land!