Being an ordinary Nepali citizen, I am not really sure why most Nepalis flash a ‘big smile’ when we see foreigners. It’s hard to say whether we are truly delighted to see them or are just struck with awe to see people who are different from us.
Anyway, we welcome the aliens with our grins and I guess they are pleasantly surprised at this, probably because people in the West are too busy to greet strangers with cheerful looks.
While talking of us Nepalis, it’s apparent that God has blessed us with abundant time. If we find somebody to talk to, we forget everything. We go on and on for hours. We simply have too much time. And as a perk to our listeners, sometimes we even offer them tea, lunch and dinner.
We love to talk. We have a gift of the gab. Talk has been an integral part of our lives. We carry it everywhere we go and it is available to anyone who has some time to listen to us. I suppose our talks are not boring, at least to ourselves, because we have a myriad of subjects to talk about— from our birth (some people even talk about their life before they were born!) to our childhood, family, friends, daily chores, fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams, children, long-distant relatives and their occupations and their good and bad lucks. When we meet foreigners, we again have so much to talk about—their clothes, appearances, manners and their likes and dislikes. Talking, in fact, is in our genes. Talking for us is like food, we want to have it full. If we have little, we feel hungry and look for people to satisfy us by listening to our stories.
If anybody has a desire to master the art of listening, they should talk to us. Our talks go on like the rivers that flow steadily from the Himalayas to the plains of Tarai. We keep talking even when our listeners don’t follow us. What we are interested in is talking; we don’t’ bother much about whether anybody is interested in us or not or whether our talk is making any sense to them.
Our politicians too are not any different. As a matter of fact, they are the best at talking and making false promises. They go around talking. They don’t have time to learn. They don’t have time to think. They don’t have time to weigh the possible consequences of their talks and actions. That’s why they say things they were not supposed to say and do things they were not supposed to do.
Now the question is: Is this trend going to change soon? I don’t know but what I am certain of is, they’ll just keep talking and we, too, will keep on talking but there’ll be nobody to listen.
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