6 pm and anticipating the maze of traffic over in Sahid Gate then Maitighar then Thapathali, I was willing the forces to have the khalashi bhai dhyang dhyang the side of the van so we could scoot along.
I hadn´t been out much in weeks and was excited to meet up with said company. Unfortunately for the poor folks of Kathmandu, just as our micro made its way toward the overpass to turn the corner toward the purano bus park, a traffic police held up his white-gloved hand and demanded we stall. We readily complied. After all, there was the Armed Police Force with their gun in hand as the traffic police´s sidekicks. (Guns and force in general do a good job of convincing when reason alone is insufficient.)
So, we waited and we waited - quietly for a good ten minutes (and that´s a long time for me!) before inquiring what the hold-up was about. I´d figured they were trying to tackle a jam somewhere and wanted to hold us off until that was cleared. Then I imagined they were on a drill. Then I learned we were being halted in true Nepali-style for YET ANOTHER SAWARI.
Yup, another one, just like the other one, the one plagued by all the supposedly higher ups. I am so fed up with them, and I´m the one who until recently believed in institutions, order and responsibility. But, it´s one tiny bit too ridiculous when a government that fails to function, deliver its promises and fulfill its basic obligations, gets to hold the city up just so yet another useless waste of a man can cross from Baluwatar to Baneshwar in five freaking minutes (when it takes us mere mortals about 2 hours, on a good day). That too in the evening when the city is scrambling to get home by negotiating space on not-so-public transportation! The audacity I tell you!
Is anyone else pissed off like this other than me? Because, it´s high time these sawaris are stalled until they prove to the people they deserve it! I´ll make way for the ambulance - the man inside is in an emergency. And, yes, I´ll let a parent cut me in the Salesway line if their ballistic child is unable to be placated. But, no, I will not put up with sawaris who fail to write a constitution, but are ushered with an entourage of 5 bikes and 15 cars (even if that´s a slight exaggeration on my part).
The thing is I would happily step to the side, patiently wait in the stalled-micro-buses-at-7 pm-ko line if, if, IF the Sawari-wallas would lift a finger and just draft a freaking constitution. It has to be hard - but that hard, really? It can´t take 2-plus years when Cousin Tom from diplomatic missions, Brother Dick from bilateral agencies and Uncle Harry from multilateral agencies have made it so easy. I also don´t understand why they keep getting paid when they have failed to produce.
Correct me if I´m wrong, but I think I´m right when I say that if and when a laborer fails to produce the promised product, they aren´t rewarded with next month´s pay. In fact, they have to cough up the advance and finish the work!
This CA sucks and if they would keep to themselves and not intrude on my dinner plans and micro-bus needs, I might even pretend they don´t exist. I´d try and make them a non-issue, but what the heck is up with this VIP treatment when clearly they are not important, much less very important?!
These Sawaris need to stop and my vote´s with the next candidate who gets on the micro with me, so they experience the suffocation of those vehicle in the evening rush hour, so they see what the traffic is like, and so they may actually go about trying to do something about it.
After all, it must be awfully hard to be the people when standing atop a pedestal.
(nepaliketi is a ktm-based blogger, for photos related to this blog visit www.nepaliketi.net)
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