When you travel in sleek cars amidst dozens of other vehicles, lights flashing in front, behind and past you and blowing clouds of dust, like a golden chariot gliding down the mortal roads, these people stand in queues barred by the policemen on duty. These policemen whom you may consider your faithful servants are not so. In the conversation with the public they say “what to do? What shall we do? Whatever these big people say, we have to do. Please cooperate with us.” Before almost an hour of your arrival, the traffic is cleared off the road and the otherwise chaotic valley roads are made to look serene. The vehicles are ordered to change directions or stopped altogether. The people then line up to see which “thief” it is, and wait grumbling in anger. The police boy tells them, “Don’t worry. It’s only 15 minutes now.” If it were not for the politeness of the traffic police, I think this mob would create scenes.
But you keep impatient people waiting. You do not come. The road has already worn a dead look. Then somebody shouts “there, the mother f*****s, the sons of the widows, spared by deaths, may plague take them!” Others in the line smile in agreement and gratification. Their fury has been released. Then your arrival is signaled. The sirens blare hui hui hui… As you arrive near some others repeat “there the mother...” A police van in an unimaginable speed—I have seen this speed only in your sawaris—and then the fleet of other cars few bearing (or defaming?) the national flags. As the fleet speeds up, their eyes move up and down, up and down from the direction you are coming to the direction you are going. They do not know in which car you are traveling. “In which car is that mother…?” one furious man bursts.
Somebody notices your car and you and curses “the son of the widow!” After you have passed, the surge of traffic of people and vehicles begins like torrent. There is complete chaos. The road becomes an impenetrable crowd of buses, taxis, microbuses, and people. “Baneshwar, Chabahil, Lagankhel, Lagankhel” bus helpers announce, then the mob—women with children, college boys with satchels on the backs, old men and young boys—tries to get into their respective buses. Everyone’s suffocating in the bus. It is filled to the brim. Some human bodies are so squeezed that they look like they might fall off the bus door. Then somebody begins “because of these bastards, because of this one man, millions of people have to suffer, they should be put to death.” All agree. There is complete consensus in the bus.
You must find it embarrassing. But I have started to see no faults in what they do. They have reasons. Because of you, a wife worries for her husband, a husband suspects his wife of infidelity because she comes home late from work and a mother may cry for her children stuck in the traffic. Vendors lose their business. The prime minister of the country, Mr Nepal should be aware of the difficulties which you and your colleagues, on such occasions, cause to the public.
These curses or warrants are not only directed to the sawaris of prime minister and president. They implicate all the accomplices, the political leaders, the ex-ministers, etc and involve other situations too—when prices soar, when there is un/announced strike and people have to walk all the way and when they see politicians on television making empty promises, among others.
The people in the streets curse you so much that if it were Satya Yuga, when every bani (speech) was supposed to carry some brahma (truth/wisdom) and when every curse carried power of annihilation, you would perhaps have been dead by now. But this is Kali Yuga and so no death warrant ever reaches you. But I feel they are killing you in their imagination.
mbpoudyal@yahoo.com
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