Continuing with publishing Kantipur FM commentaries I made as the host of a radio show way back in the Spring of 1998….
This one is relevant now as the coalition government, headed by Prime Minister KP Oli, has lost one of its partners — the Maoists, headed by Prachanda, withdrew their support yesterday! The Oli-garch is on the brink of facing a “no confidence” vote!
My record says this commentary accompanied the April 15 show but it has no indications of music breaks. So, I have reproduced what I have found just the way I found it!
Plus, at some point, the name of the program changed to The Music Jam from Marlboro Music Network!
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Hey hey hey hey….
I am back on the airwaves of the one and only Kantipur FM with The Music Jam. This is your host, Dorje. And this being Wednesday, I have some great music and a commentary.
There is a limit to everything. To all things. Well…at least that’s what I used to believe…until recently, until I came across an exception. This exception, this thing that I see no limit to, is the ridiculousness of Nepali Politics.
I am no political analyst, just a chemistry teacher and a DJ. And so, anything I say on the ridiculousness of Nepali Politics is my opinion, mine and mine only.
Musical Chair is a great game. I enjoy it greatly, both as a participant and a spectator. It’s a lot of fun for both children and sometimes for adults too. Like any game, at the end of Musical Chair too, there is clear winner—a single individual. And that’s where part of the fun is—in watching and seeing the end of the game approach nearer and nearer.
What happens at a musical Chair game, and ask your indulgence here, is that you start with a whole bunch of participants seated on a chair each, placed in a circle. When the music starts playing, they go round and round the circle of chairs until it stops, until the music stops. Then they all sit on the chair they are next to or on the next empty one in front.
So, as the game progresses, the players occupy different positions in the circle.
While the music is playing, a few chairs are removed, and what that does at the end of every round of music, is to leave some participants chair-less and they are made to sit out. Over time then, you see the number of players going down, and just before the end, only two are left. At that stage, one chair is placed in the middle, and the two players are made to go around the circle of chairs placed around this central chair. When the music stops, the person, the lone person who manages to grab the chair in the middle, becomes the winner.
And what does this game have anything to do with the ridiculousness of Nepali Politics?
What Musical Chair has to do with Politics in Nepal is that, in some ways, they are similar, and in the ways they are different is where Nepali Politics is found lacking. Like the positions of the players in Musical Chair, political office holders in Nepal changes over time (and sometime the positions are even left vacant for months! but that’s something else).
There has been a lot of shuffling around in the governmental offices.
Unlike in Musical Chair where a change is dictated by the music, rarely is there a sensible reason for the changes in the office bearers. And I mean sensible!
And unlike Musical Chair, Nepali politics involves a group of players that do remain pretty much constant. The participants, the political figures move from chair to chair but only a very few leave the scene.
Furthermore, in Nepali politics, a chair has already been placed in the middle, long before the number of participants reduces to two. Nothing wrong there. And each player not only moves around the circle of chairs, they also take turns at the central chair, the middle chair, not necessarily because each one of them deserves it, and that’s where the problem is.
Like I said I enjoy Musical Chair, and it’s great fun for both children and adults alike. But I definitely wouldn’t enjoy Musical Chair if the same group of players went round and round the same circle of chairs all the time and the winners were always one of them whether they were good players or not!
The fun is in seeing that one out of all the participants comes out a winner; in seeing a resolution to the game. And it is the victor, the one that deserves, who occupies the middle chair. Not so in Nepali politics. Alas, no such happenings in Nepali politics.
A Musical Chair game of Nepali Politics in which there is no end, no conclusion, no resolution in sight, is definitely no fun at all for a spectator like me. Nepali Politics is not only a boring version of that fun-filled game, it is a lot of other things too.
Lot of other things, most of which are not praiseworthy, most just plain ridiculous just like the ones I have elaborated. And that brings me to my initial remark, the remark I made at the beginning of the hour.
At the beginning of the hour, I remarked that I felt the ridiculousness of Nepali Politics was one of the exceptions to the rule, to my belief rather, that there is a limit to everything. Nepali Politics tops all the ridiculous things in this world I think.
Just pick up a paper like Kathmandu Post or Kantipur to see what I mean. Week after week you will find something new that the politicians have done or said or something new that has happened which is more ridiculous than the previous one.
Okay, I have talked at length about the ridiculousness of Nepali politics.
And you know something? What is more ridiculous than what I have presented here…what might be the most ridiculous of all is that I can’t decide…I CANNOT decide which is more ridiculous: a) Nepali politics or b) that there seems to be no limit to the ridiculousness of Nepali politics.
So firstly you have that ridiculous politics, and secondly its ridiculousness knows no bounds, and thirdly there’s ME, there is I Dorje, who can’t decided which of the two is more ridiculous. Did that sound a little ridiculous? A little too ridiculous? And what, I pray, could be more ridiculous than all of that put together?!
Am I being ridiculous? That’s because it’s almost 8 and time for me to wrap up this hour and get outta here!
