I don’t know if I can make you any more cheerful about the state of the nation than you already are this week. But let me give it a try: Nepal may depend on India for fossil fuels, but thank goodness we are completely self-reliant in the production of beer.
As you all know we have been hoisted on our own petard by the Indians with an alleged, unofficial, undeclared, purported, unannounced, so-called, supposed, informal, (quote) blockade (unquote). Since Prime Minister Jhusil Da is not on email, he was sent a telegram by his Indian counterpart this week which read: ‘SO YOU PASSED A CONSTITUTION COMMA NOTED COMMA OIL STOP COMMA GAS STOP’.
Scientists have long known that there is a direct correlation between Himalayan geo-tectonics and geo-politics. The April Earthquake and the September Blockade have the same geological genesis, both were caused by India pushing into Nepal. This plate expansionism is linked to the convection of magma deep below the earth’s mantle and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it when folks South of the Border suffer one of their bouts of irritable bowel syndrome.
None of this is new, of course. We have to remember that India has been acting pushy for the past 70 million years, ever since it broke off with Gondwanaland, shed Madagascar and Mauritius along the way as it sailed across an ocean that bears its name, and rammed into Eurasia. Which is why Nepal finds itself squeezed between India and China, a fact that our founding grandfather Kingman Prithvi Narayan the Great recognised 250 years ago when he coined the famous phrase: “Let’s face it: Nepal has its nuts in a vice.”
Seismologists have used geo-location sensors along the Main Boundary Thrust (MBT) in the Tarai to come up with the astounding recent discovery that there is no No Man’s Land anymore, border pillars have been found to move by up to 50m in the course of one night. Nowhere else on the planet is continental drift happening at such a high velocity as here. And way out there at the tri-junction of Nepal, India and China on Lipu Lekh the tectonic plates have moved so dramatically that a whole chunk of Nepali territory, unbeknownst to Kathmandu, was thrust over to the Indian side.