Super Bandh Bandh, Super Bandh Bandh, Super Bandh Bandh…

(I’m sorry, it’s stuck in my head, just like that, to the tune of Ricky Martin’s “Shake Your Bon-Bon.”)

Well, so much for my one year anniversary celebration.  That must be put on hold, like everything else in the city.  It was paralyzed today by the largest bandh I’ve seen.

(Yes, Kathmandu, happy anniversary to you, too.)

I’ve already explained this story twice today, but here goes again, for the final time:

We woke up this morning with the streets deserted.  Except, there were more pedestrians than normal.  But cars?  Buses?  Tuk-tuks?  Even bicycles?

I think not.

A massive bandh had been called by the Young Communist League (commonly known as YCL), which is essentially the youth wing of the Maoists.  Other Maoist-affiliated groups supported it.  And that meant that everyone with any sense abruptly closed their business, or abstained from moving their vehicle from wherever it was parked.

For most of the day, I didn’t really understand the reason for the bandh.  I heard that even people on bicycles were being stopped–the bandh called for no use of vehicles, at all.  That struck me as completely ridiculous.  Especially as I heard the news abruptly, as it pulled me out of a dreaming sleep.  I hollered at the air about the absurdity.

I’m very uncomfortable with bandhs.  I strongly believe in the right to protest.  I support the right to form unions and political organizations, and to strike.

But when you use force to compel everyone else to join your protest…  Well, frankly, then you’ve turned the tables in an ugly way.  Assumedly, most protests are directed at what the protesters perceive as a misuse of force.  It seems the height of hypocrisy to then exact force on innocent bystanders to compel them to support your cause, however temporarily.

Though, apparently, the cause this time was pretty bad.  A district committee member of the Maoists apparently died on Thursday under mysterious circumstances–the bandh was to protest that, and to protest that no one was informed of his death until Sunday, despite how he’d been missing for a week and apparently had been taken to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital for treatment, where he died and was found in their morgue.  Worryingly, the YCL are blaming youth members of the UML party, which is the current party leading the government, and the party of the new Prime Minister.  They claim the death was a murder.

I really could have called this post Nepali Politics 106.

But since I have little to do with the politics, I had a 3-day weekend.  I read books and magazines; I couldn’t teach my English class.  I sadly looked out the window at the moldering garbage by the road and wished that someone somewhere in the world would invent the notion of protesting by ignoring the “establishment” and single-handedly fixing small problems–like trash beside the road.  On the other hand, it was very quiet.  No beeping, or sounds of passing vehicles–they’re never very loud here, anyway, compared to probably every other national capital, but it still managed to be more peaceful with the utter lack of vehicles.  The songs of the birds were very clear and pretty.

I watched my neighbor’s children clustered on a balcony of their house, playing, and shouting down to pedestrians in the road.  Apparently they didn’t have class, either.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, apparently protestors were burning tires and pitching stones, or vandalizing vehicles that defied the bandh.  Apparently police fired tear gas at one crowd pitching rocks at them.

And above all, it’s apparent that Nepal needs some resolution to its political problems.  If the man was murdered, police need to be gathering evidence and interviewing suspects.  Instead they’re kept busy firing tear gas.  If no one trusts the police, then legislators need to be working hard on putting together a new constitution and discussing how to confront corruption–instead of being kept at home, unable to move forward with running the country.  If everyone is on edge right now (as they usually are) because of electricity shortages, water shortages, unclean water, lack of sanitation, and spreading diseases, then people need to be coming together to end all those problems.  Instead they can’t even go shopping, or sit by the side of the road and sell their produce.  Or attend school.  Or do anything else.

So I sigh, and read about Nepal’s ancient history–birthplace of Gautama Buddha, site of the establishment of awe-inspiring stupas and temples, built in time out of mind.  I read about the modern diversity of the people, with dozens of ethnic groups and over a hundred languages… languages from completely separate language families, Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Austo-Asiatic.  I realize that the ancestors of all those people wandered here from thousands of diverse places, and they decided to stay, carving out a life not only in some of the most awe-inspiring natural beaty in the world, but in some of the most difficult conditions–on the sides of hills that would be classified as mountains and left uninhabited anywhere else on Earth,  or living even higher, on the himals themselves, where people patiently cultivate crops or graze their yaks even above the treeline.  They survive drenching monsoons and baking droughts.

And I read the newspapers, and sigh about the current problems:  murders, impunity, disorder, political fighting instead of compromise…

Maybe it’s sadly appropriate for the country of the Himalayas to have gargantuan problems.  But this isn’t Zimbabwe; this isn’t Somalia.

And if the people of this country can conquer the Himalayas, surely they can conquer anything else in their way, as well.

But in the meantime, I’m afraid, there will be bandhs.

Nepali of the Day:

raajnitik:  national

samasya:  problem

banda garnu:  to close

vidyarthi:  student

pasal:  store

padhnu:  to read, to study

siknu:  to learn

padhaunu:  to teach a subject (literally, to cause to read)

sikaaunu:  to teach a skill (literally, to cause to learn)

kinnu:  to buy