I was fooling around with my smartphone the other day and I was mildly surprised to discover that my office was only 3.4 kms from where I live.[break]
Judging by the distance, that’s a mere 10 minutes’ drive. Never mind that it usually takes me an hour and a half back and forth.
Now, this “smartphone” is telling me that I can reach Nagarkot in about 57 minutes. Of course, you could argue that Nagarkot isn’t a fair comparison because there’s such a vast difference in directions between driving to Pulchowk and driving to Nagarkot.
But even if you confine yourself to the centers of the city, the time it takes to reach the destinations inside the city are impressive.
Another arresting fact is to do with scale. In the past 20 years, the population of Katmandu has increased almost equivalent to the population of India.
Like you, I too find it amazing, not least because I don’t know where all these new people are but because my mom can’t seem to find a good plumber or an electrician in the entire city.
With a population of close to eight million, surely there must be one good plumber tucked away someplace.
A remarkable thing about Kathmandu, if you have been living here for a long time, is how very big and very empty so much of it still is.
Consider this, Budanilkantha, Godavari, Shivapuri and Nagarjun combined have an area bigger than the Valley but a population less than that of Chabahil.
In Nagarjun, one can still drive for a few minutes and not see anything but trees and hills. I’m constantly caught out by this.
Most of the people I talk to assume Kathmandu and its vicinity are already too crowded.
In fact, the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that most of the people whose homes are relatively safe from the main streets are in fact secretly happy they are finally being widened.
Of course, parts of them are unquestionably crowded, but that is mostly because 90% of the population travel by car and motorbikes, and the remaining 10% don’t work; so they don’t venture 100 meters from their homes unless they need to buy a packet of cigarettes and supply has run out in the store closest to their house.
There is also a growing belief that the best way of dealing with this supposed crisis is by limiting the number of jobs and entry to the people who don’t belong to the city.
Very often, I hear people remarking how pleasant Kathmandu is during Dashain when the only people still left inside the Valley are the actual inhabitants of the place. Give me a break.
I hear the same people also complaining that the didi who did the washing and the cooking and the baje who looked after the garden, and the guard who also watched over the dogs, have all gone home for the festival and how difficult a time this is for them to ‘manage’ these things on their own. So there!
While getting rid of the settlers may or may not open employment opportunities or clear the roads, it’s certainly going to leave a lot of dishes unwashed.
The fact is Nepal is already one of the least crowded countries in the world. On a daily basis, 1,000
people leave the country in search of work and education daily. Most of them don’t even bother coming back.
Of course, most of us living in Kathmandu have always tended to see things in a different way.
When one such red-haired Minister proclaimed a few weeks ago that petroleum products would be available aplenty in a week’s time, the employees at Nepal Oil Corporation rigorously nodded their heads in unison and proclaimed it would happen.
Which is why, five weeks later, I say the employees at Nepal Oil Corporation are a bunch of dimwits.
The writer is a banker by profession. He enjoys single malts and other good things in life.
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