Oh! Yeah! Recreating May 7th, 2010? That’s what I had in mind. I dug in deep to my guts and invoked my soul with the same youthful exuberance; I had while participating in the similar event initiated by FNCCI and other partnering firms, encouraging my downtrodden hopes of better Nepal. So I went firm footed to reach Durbarmarg sharp 5pm after finishing regular official and non-official chores only to witness my hopes shattered into rubles of despair and anguish of my psyche losing hope of seeing matters change in Nepal. The bottom line- the peace and harmony rally today at Durbarmarg was a total disappointment which showed in the looks of discern in faces leaving the event after a short stint of about 30 minutes while the rest looked for refuge from the nightmare of witnessing one’s hope crumbling into pieces under the agonizingly scorching hot evening sun to cafes and restaurants in the area.
FNCCI did what it does
best help businesses proliferate and here by supplying huge crowds into the
local eateries. Now I realize how foolish I was expecting any enlightening
facts and words of wisdom about the grave consequences of the bandh culture in
Nepal which I thought the event had been organized to voice against and to
spread the message of peace, harmony and accord in the psyche of the youths.
Then, inadvertently, present relevant arguments to stop the divide created in
the minds of the citizens engulfed by the stridently anonymous outcries of the
visionaries who laid the foundation of the culture of bandh. (I mean to say the
pioneers leaving behind apparent footprints to follow the trail of conspiracy.)
Let’s not go into this
blame game of who did what well and what worse culminates from the good
intention (rather inadvertently or so they claim), without being more gullible
into thinking otherwise (bad) about anything, not even the events’ motto. Well,
the motto was sheer enlightenment about…. (Not really sure what, apart from the
seemingly obvious - peace, harmony, exchange of good will and some good old
publicity.)
Yet, I felt there was
something lacking there. I saw there was a whole bunch of enthusiastic young
minds, worried more about their portrayal in the frame of the camera they had
brought down to upload some cool, hip pictures of a cult youth initiative. (I
guess the target audience at the event, or the ones who turned up would earn
the event organizers the bragging rights to call it a youth initiative though the
concept was masterminded, in the background, by the redundantly wise mature
master minds.) This event must have benefited facebook, as the organizers owe
the social network giant a symbiotic favor for making this event go viral on
facebook, in Nepal. And no wonder people there were busy taking snaps,
inadvertently thinking about posting the photos on facebook and enjoying a
moment under the spotlight like FNCCI and some of the famed guests, though I
saw some notable celebrity faces losing interest and leaving the venue rather
quirkily trying to avoid appearing disappointed.
Yet, this event seemed
successful in making it clear that we all love our country and are anti-bandh
and anti-caste-based-segregation. It was rather vociferously articulated
through the choices of songs that were played created an aura of concert. It
felt like I had come to a concert where the theme was to flaunt patriotism,
unity and harmony. Yet the repetitive message delivered through the speeches of
the honoraries and the orator gave me a vibe that the sound system required
some maintenance to avoid replaying the same audio repeatedly.
The concert aspect was
pretty interesting and ostensibly creative. It must have soothed people’s mind
that might have been aggravated by sitting in the sweltering heat of the
evening summer sun. No wonder people opted to seek refuge for relief from the
exhausting sun after a hard day’s work at the office in the nearby restaurants
and eateries. The crowd seemed rather thrilled to have been part of an event of
such magnitude as changing the current trend of affairs in Nepal and more so
the city. They were enjoying their refreshments and a light evening snack in
those eateries. How refreshing! It, at least, felt so to me.
So the message was
clear that the bandh culture is wrong (even though it was elementary) and the
current affairs causing the bandhs were more wrong and that the civil discord
has to stop and that we should unite to think of ourselves as Nepali than
belonging to a particular ethnicity or caste and that we should realize what we
already do and that and that. Yet somewhere I felt something was missing. May
be, I was the only one trying to find the missing clue related to what could
have made sense, organizing such a huge mass event with so much media coverage
to spread a message, an analytical one, to the preposterously large crowd
sitting back home choosing to not show up smartly.
The message could have
been as refutation to the vehement crowd that is holding to the belief that
their cause for bandhs to meet their demands doesn’t have any unequivocal
effect on the economy. I was hoping the experts at FNCCI were giving us some
substantive facts and figures about the negative causality between bandhs and
the economy and advertently the lives of the people, by giving rise to
ridiculous inflation as much as Rs200 for a Kg of tomato. May be I was
expecting too much from the event to learn about the ill-effects of the current
affairs on the health sector. May be, I was wrong in thinking that my appetite
for knowledge about the grave danger Nepal is facing would be satiated. I
thought the organizers were going to enlighten us about the future prospect of
Nepal which is standing on the cusp of civil riot emanating from caste and
ethnic discrimination in the civil minds. May be it is not as lucid to them
about where this path will lead Nepalese to and a possible solution as a
summary.
The summary I thought
from this event would have been educating the ignorant minds creating divides
in the minds of the people who’re taking charge of all the dreams that had been
implanted in their minds since the last 22 years after the inception of
democracy in 1990. I reckon people have lost faith in the government to fulfill
those dreams thinking they are incompetent. Yet, they don’t realize that there
is no such thing as radical change. Change is but an evolutionary process that
is continuous and not revolutionary. To build Nepal into the next USA or
Switzerland is impossible and that it is about time they reflect on one prominent
quote, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
The inference I drew
from today’s event could be just one. The message was loud and clear, the
writing was on the walls, “The whole system is run by one in the herds, inept
in divergent thinking, and there is one thing and one thing only that people
want- Public Relation and free Publicity apart from messing the streets in
Durbarmarg with redundancy.
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