Paramendra Bhagat's Blog
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Here I am in Boston, a few days from quitting trucking for good to focus on my business 24/7, as in, if you read for about an hour before sleep, the mind works overnight, while the body sleeps, and it is a knowledge business. After 48 states, driving around feels more like work and less like travel, not to say the business has a much larger income potential and global possibilities: it will take me to the two remaining states and beyond.
I spent a splendid evening with two of my high school classmates. You spend a few hours with people like high school classmates, and the gap of years just fades away. And you reconnect. And there was the Harvard Square experience. I have driven through Boston a few times before and a few times around it, but those have been in oversize vehicles along the freeways. Once I delivered a load downtown, and was able to grab a bite at a local eatery. But nothing like this evening. Being given a ride in what truckers derisively refer to as "four wheelers," and a walk at the heart of Cambridge is special.
If you grew up in Nepal, you will talk about it for the rest of your lives. And so we talked soap, we talked politics. The civil war situation, about how the desperation might still not have bottomed out, which is a great tragedy for the common people. We have a friend - my roommate for two years at high, three if sharing space in a huge dormitory room with two dozen other young ones counts - who got manhandled by a group of army personnel in the thick of the night two weeks back, a skilled human rights activist being subjected to a gross act of human rights violation. And we are gearing to protest that, at several levels at once. He is not alone. Solidarity will be expressed.
There is such a political logjam, such rigidity among the political forces in the country: the royal palace, the political parties, and the Maoists. One wonders, what next? What could be the way out? There is some movement though. One Maoist leader went on record saying the Maoists will settle for a new situation where the national army is no longer under the king, but under the people's representatives. A more senior Maoist leader countered that and reiterated the goal is still a republic. But the chink has been seen. The student protests in the country have increasingly become a call for a republic, and the political parties themselves are moving towards such voices.
The royal palace occupies center stage for now. A constitutional monarchy is one that is politically irrelevant. By that definition, the monarchy in Nepal is activist and not constitutional. That will have to change. And if the change comes from the palace's initiative, the monarchy might survive, or it might invite a showdown by overestimating its powers and popularity with the people. It might go away, pushed out: never underestimate people power.
The country obviously is going through growing pains. The monarchy is at the center of the debate. A revised monarchy that is totally constitutional, with all its political fangs taken out, that serves a ceremonial presence, and offsets the state expenditure on it by generating tourism revenue by opening up its holds like palaces to visitors, might be the meeting point out of the bloody logjam the country has been subjected to. On their part, the Maoists would have to lay down arms. A new constitution would have to be written that guarantees the basic freedoms and a multi-party democratic framework, and perhaps a federal form of government.
What are other options? A continued civil war of attrition where the two guns - the Maoists and the monarch - fight to the finish? While the people suffer, the economy goes down the drain?
I am also getting drawn into SEBS, my high school alumni association. I might run for its presidency on July 4.
You can't be missing globalization and the internet, the two biggest of the contemporary trends. If the internet were a country, SEBS is a cyber constituency of real people, and I feel like I were considering running for ward chairperson. If you understand the two trends, or at least appreciate it, the idea of going or not going "back" to Nepal sounds archaic. In some ways, I never left Nepal, and never will. In other ways, you can do so much more for Nepal by shooting for a global presence. I am a global citizen. More specifically, I am a netizen.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
I have been writing online for a few years now. Primarily for my own homepage at Geocities. But also elsewhere, most notably at Epinions. And Nepal centered sites like Sajha. At my personal homepage, I did not get enough interaction, the page counter is a poor substitute for it, and at places like Epinions, the message and the person got too diffuse. And so I have discovered the blog option about which I am very excited. I don't worry about the code behind the page, and people can leave comments. I am excited. It is like when I bumped into Hotmail for the first time, or for that matter Geocities. Motime, as in more than instant messaging. I have not been a big fan of chat rooms. And talking to friends online is kind of neat, but it does not really feel like a conversation. One word here, another phrase there. So I am really glad I will be able to vent some here at the blog.
My past writings: http://www.geocities.com/paramendra/2004/home.html
