DR RAMESH KHATRY
Hot, hotter, hottest! A South Indian friend had once told me that his home-state had only three annual seasons. Well, the rest of Nepal may enjoy four to six seasons but Kathmandu Valley has only two: muck and mud.

The muck-season prevails when we have dry weather. Most disgusting things qualify as muck. Above all, dust rules the atmosphere, and shops benefit from selling facemasks. Garbage gathers like mini-mountains on tarred streets because Kathmandu Municipality officers probably sold the Indian-gifted steel skips as scrap metal. During the early 1990s, Kathmanduites gave directions according to these huge garbage containers. As usual our governments don’t add onto foreign gifts received, but simply make off with them. Thus, the sorry state of a Chinese built institution which King Birendra had proudly announced over Radio Nepal long ago, “My government shall build a trolley bus service from Tripureshwar to Bhaktapur.”

Fortunately, the monsoon starts. The blessed rains wash away the muck of the previous season. Of course, the garbage-dumping on the streets still prevails and gives continuity to the character of the capital. But, the city looks much cleaner and any remaining grass much greener. Give credit to nature for this, not the Kathmandu Municipality. The mud-season has started.

When Dr Baburam Bhattarai called the UML “eunuchs” and “third gender”, what could Jhalanath Khanal do? He replied with gentle mudslinging. He told Bhattarai to look at his own face in the mirror. Bhattarai probably did, and doubted his sex for the first time.
As you walk to your office on the footpathless, partially tarred, pot-holed road, using the pitiful space that the trucks, taxis, and motorcycles mercifully grant you, some drivers behave as if they are competing in a Grand Prix race. So, the taxi splash may muddy the clean shirt and trousers you wore in the morning. As long as your wife smiles and uses the super Wheel Washing Powder, you can wear it the next week and wait for the truck driver to do the splashing favor all over again. However, some pedestrians have learnt the Loktantrik mode of retaliation. They may thrash the taxi driver (if he happens to stop or slow down) who has splashed on them, break the vehicle’s viewing mirrors, or send a stone sailing through the windscreen.

During the mud-season, the monsoon can pour in torrents. Then, the narrow dirt road limited by houses and walls on both sides suddenly becomes a river of sewage. No choice but to trudge along in your boots, and guess which houses have contributed to the sludge soaking your socks. Muck and mud alternate rapidly. Let the rain stop for a few days. Then, it is the dust storms take over. Darwin’s theory of evolution says that the environment, besides other things, conditions creatures.

So, it influences political mammals too. Politics (or lack of it) during Panchayat days bored everyone, and people bought newspapers mainly to glaze over the advertisements or see if one passed SLC, college exams. Now dailies and weeklies thrive because, to adhere to Kathmandu’s two seasons, our politicians indulge in either muckraking or mudslinging.

Muckraking hits the target quicker and better. The Maoists excel at it. Just a few examples will suffice. When Dr Baburam Bhattarai called the UML “eunuchs” and “third gender”, what could Jhalanath Khanal do? He replied with gentle mudslinging. He told Bhattarai to look at his own face in the mirror. Bhattarai probably did, and doubted his sex for the first time. At least, he didn’t answer Khanal back. Prior to the downfall of the Maoist-led government, Bhattarai claimed, “We don’t have to wait till Sunday to resign!” KP Oli retorted, “Sure, resign. You don’t have to wait till Sunday!” PM Dahal bowed out on Monday.

In reply to Maoist’s muckraking statement that Girija Prasad Koirala is a royalist and even worse, the octogenarian replied, “The Maoists are like a ripe mango. They will fall because of their own inefficiency.” Behold! Sudden departure of Prachanda’s government proved him right.

Muckraking reached its dizzying heights after the Commander-in-Chief Rookmangud Katawal got the president’s nod to stay on. The Shaktikhor video had enlightened both, but Dahal didn’t know they had watched his antics in closed, dark rooms. Maoist muckraking labeled the president as another Gyanendra, a traitor to civilian supremacy. The “impartial” civil society on the other hand conjured up other nicknames. The president, on his part, threatened to go return to buffalo-grazing in Dhanusha rather than undoing his steps.

Muckraking Maoists have seen other parties as military-supremacy-advocates, feudalists, capitalists, regressive forces, and worshipers of foreign lords. Super nationalist Pushpa Kamal Dahal forgot that he and some Maoist leaders had lived at the mercy of Indian landlords for eight years. Even the revelation that he himself had invited Indian mediation for getting rid of Katawal didn’t diminish his zeal. Watching him at his best on television, one housewife remarked, “What uncouth language. I can’t believe he is the PM of our country!”

The Shaktikhor video had some muckraking but more of muck-revealing. Dahal gloried that his cadres could break legs better than UML novices, money to martyrs would bring in “truck-loads” (of weapons), and he will cleverly use all others parties as “useful idiots” for his master plan to capture the state. We had already begun to bask in the hope of 10,000 megawatts of electricity and the leap-frogging economy leading to double-digit growth, only to find out that those would come after Nepal became a one party Maoist state, a People’s Republic.

Don’t blame Dahal or the Maoist for lying. As atheists, the Maoists have discarded future judgment and life after death as grandmother’s bedside tales. The only reality is here and now; the only goal is to capture the state by “hook or crook”, as Ganeshman Singh used to say. Lying just serves as a tool. Don’t blame parties either for muckraking or mudslinging. (Recently, Madesi People’s Rights Forum outdid all by having a fistfight. They held this Loktantrik contest among themselves with the best goal in mind—the premiership for the Madesi people.)

We have already noted that Kathmandu has only two seasons: muck and mud. Do both condition our environment, which in turn determines the way our politicians behave? Is it the environment? No, stupid! It is the lack of political morality.
Courtesy: Myreublica