It all started with Jhallu Babu yawning away at the Nepal Tourism Year official launch at the stadium. Then Ram Chunderji started nodding off on candid camera, and at one point snored away with his mouth open. Not that it wasn't a rousing ceremony with imitation North Korean mass gymnastics and speeches galore. But the stress and sleepless nights seem to be taking their toll on both future prime minister wannabes. The two admitted later that the sound of ultralights had a hypnotic effect. Maybe. The Mule, for one, is sure NTY 2011 will be a roaring success as long as our leaders go to sleep and don't bother us too much for the rest of the year.
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Now that UNMIN has left, what we are left with is chow min politics and no one to blame. The Maoist army is formally coming under the Special Committee at a grand ceremony on Saturday at Shaktikhor. Comrade Fearsome had quite a lot of convincing to do to get his recruits to agree, and his line of argument made a lot of sense. He told them, "Look I already declared that you guys were under the Special Committee two years ago and that made no diff, so what's the big deal?" Such is the Chairman's oratorical skills that did the trick. But guess who nearly sabotaged Saturday's function, none other than Come-red JN who tried to convinc PKD the handover should be done when he became PM and not by Madhav ("Lame Duck") Nepal. But someone else in the nick of time stepped in to sabotage the sabotage.
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Now that UNMIN has left, there is no reason why we can't revert to accepted vocabulary instead of the laboured politically-correct jargon intended to appease the Baddies in 2006. Here is the new glossary:
