The umbrella and the Maoist

Rain. Not sure what I think of it. And there’s a fuck of a lot of it here, right now. It’s different from the rain back home – the sombre drizzle that shoves grey over the place. Here it’s something else. You get really, really wet. And quickly. You reach saturation point after a few minutes, but dry soon enough afterwards in the heat. I bought an umbrella the other day on the way to Ratna Park bus station, from an old man with deformed hands. I take it with my everywhere now; it sits in my multi-coloured Nepali bag, next to my glasses case. I’m learning to cope, I suppose. Underrated, umbrellas.

The monsoon is the only season in Nepal when the rural folk can laugh at the Kathmandu-wallahs. For most of the year, country people have to face dire poverty, state neglect, malnutrition – among other nuisances. Most of them dream of one day packing up and moving to the bright lights (power-cuts permitting) of the capital, where the cracked pavements are lined with rupees and jobs flow out of the open sewers. It must all look pretty peachy from the hills, what with the buildings and everything.

But, come the rains, Kathmandu’s streets become brown, heaving canals. Take my journey to work this morning: I took one of those Noddy-sized mini-vans, where as many people as possible – a surprising amount, in the case of Nepalis – are shoved inside before the thing starts moving; and where I must perform some pretty painful gymnastics. Yes, undignified – just a little bit – but I felt pretty smug looking through the window at the people outside. They were wading – yes, wading – through muddy water, just to get from A to B. But I had to join them at one stage, when the Noddy-van met a road closed by the police; some high-spirited students had set a few tyres alight, right after looting and burning the office of a university professor they happened to disagree with. Now, I’m no expert vandal, but I thought that the idea behind tyre-burning was spectacle – setting up a big stack of them before lighting up; that sort of thing. As it was, there were just a few scattered, solitary burning tyres about the road; they looked rather sad and pathetic. Anyhow, I arrived at work with my lower half muddy. It’s enough to make you run away and become a rice picker.

*

When most student-types go to third world countries, they do something Worthwhile. Teach little kids, build wells, save pandas from certain extinction, all that jazz. I, on the other hand, sit in an office and fact-check documents, write briefs on South Asian geopolitics, upload job advertisements to the website, occasionally journey to the water cooler; and so the day goes. I won’t be curing AIDS any time soon, and probably won’t get to go to Heaven, achieve Nirvana, or whatever other terribly nice things await terribly nice people. I’ll have to settle for the shitty alternatives.

But journalism is a noble cause in Nepal. As it is any country, I believe. But in Nepal it takes on a more heroic guise – a sort of tights and cape profession. Intimidation of journalists is something of an organised sport here. They are considered fair game by much of the political class, particularly the thuggish Maoist ex-guerrillas, handed power by an optimistic electorate in the post-conflict spring elections.

The Maoists may now find themselves in opposition to the ruling UML-led coalition, due to the resignation of top-cadre Prachanda (‘the fierce one’) from office over the ‘unconstitutional’ sacking of the conservative army chief, but they can still bring Nepal to a standstill at the click of their fingers – as they prove with the endless bandas (strikes), now more numerous than Hindu festivals. They may now have entered the ‘democratic process,’ but they wear political office like a child stomping about the house in his daddy’s shoes. It’s all just a fun little game; and their sport is to stick it to the baddies. The baddies, of course, are anyone who happens to disagree with them. In this respect, journalists are not their friends.

This is a fairly typical news item: on 1 June, the day of another enforced strike in Kathmandu, cadres of the Newar Autonomous State routinely halted vehicles bearing press logos, smashed the windows, took the keys and beat up the journalists. All to stop them reporting the hardships endured by many ordinary citizens when the city was forced to a standstill by a political group most had little sympathy with. Rocking up to cover a strike – or any other kind of political incident; a rally, for instance – is dealt with as insubordination.

But, worst of all in these cases, no one is punished, the victims go uncompensated, and groups like the Youth Communist League – the militant arm of the Maoists – only grow in strength. More pressing than corruption in Nepal is impunity – Nepal is ranked 8th on CPJ’s Impunity Index, as a country ‘where journalists are murdered on a recurring basis and governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute the killers.’ In all this, the police are little more than smartly-dressed spectators. As the YCL beats up another of their ‘class enemies,’ they merely stand by, wagging their fingers like disapproving nannies. Oh gosh, they must say to each other, just look at those rascals: at it again, beating up another innocent press-officer; what are they like?

It doesn’t help that few of the media laws that exist in Britain, defining the limits with which politicians and press can attack each other, are in place in Nepal. Neither knows how far they should go – in the absence of libel laws or anything similar – and so both play a dangerous game, taking what they can and crying foul at the slightest affront. The press is no angel either: there is rather a lot ‘yellow’ journalism among the smaller, Nepali-language papers – namely, blackmailing businessmen for hefty donations under the threat of smear campaigns. It all comes down to a question of respect, and none of this is conducive to a healthy public life in Nepal – something it so badly needs in this transitional period, where the Maoist refusal join the coalition continues the bleed the government of legitimacy. So, here I am, helping to fight the good fight. A hero of Nepal, no less.

*

An excellent female I know – who shall not be named because it would flatter her too much – suggested I should allow a little introspection into my blog. Less of the worldly, interesting stuff about Nepali history and culture; more about my feelings, or whatever. Although my instinct was to reject the idea as selling out to the current, me-centric brand of travel writing, I thought I’d give it a pop, for what it’s worth.

So, how do I FEEL? Well, there are times…in the evening, during a power cut, with candles set about me, the yellow lights of Kathmandu dotting the window pane, the sound of barking dogs rising from the pavements below; when I look to myself and think, stroking my stubble and loosing a sigh…. Okay, enough of this introspective crap. I’ll just have to work on it. END.