Sunday, February 19, 2012

Celebrating NEPALDOM..!!!

It is 7th Falgun tomorrow, the democracy day of Nepal. The day will be celebrated at Tundikhel with great enthusiasm. But are we all celebrating ? Despite the increasing inflation,shortages of cooking gas and petroleum products, the ever growing anarchy , the growing number of youths in front of the embassies in Kathmandu, the poor governance , unemployment , stalled political dialog, low GDP, poverty etcetera  and etcetera ; I do believe that we still have more profound and intriguing reasons to celebrate.

Are you thinking about statistics?  Are they terrifying? We should not always go for numbers. Take examples of the neighboring counties in our north and south. The world is gazing at them with wonderment, often dazzled by the leap they have taken. The other parts of the world are going Ga' Ga' over them. Their statistics are equally bad. India's in even worse (approx 77% below poverty- old datas* ) . Never had it before occurred to me that  with 50% and more population under the age of thirty five , we have more than enough reasons to celebrate our democracy day. Isn't statistics sometimes reassuring? The prosperous Nepal's hopes and dreams lies with this generation of mine.

The raw, energetic faces similar to my age are joining the block of entrepreneurs , advocating youth empowerment , advocating women empowerment and  the list goes on. I really feel proud and happy to witness these growing changes. Nepalese youths are not delinquent either. They have taken the courage to travel to the developed countries, sweated their ass to send in remittance home. I am therefore not amazed when my in law (Phupaju) who learnt to use cell phone at his mid 30's uses the latest iPhone with such an ease at his late fifties. So similar is the case with rising number of shopping malls, better theater halls. Ah yes ! It has not been long that a nepali movie "Loot" ran houseful in the theaters. Amazingly the Koran Johar movie "Agneepath" could not compete with the movie in our Ktown.

What should I talk about now? Women empowerment?? At a time when I read news of a lady burnt alive. This is sad.There are thousands of such untold brutality in our society. But I do believe that time is changing.Change always happens for good. Let me illustrate this with an example. Last weekend I was waiting for microbus in front of Kathmandu Mall bus station. As usual, there was a rush of crowd moving hither -thither. A beautiful lady was standing by my side. A group of guys came into the scene. I could not see what happened but a minute later I could hear the lady yell at them," what the fuck are you guys up to? Get the hell out of here". Everyone looked towards her. The guys walked away with pale faces. For some she appeared like a horrible bitch. Is it Irony or Is it Iconic? For me what I saw there was, the modern day girls have found better ways and guts to claim their territory; just like a tigress roars in the jungle to claim her territory.

Do I need to talk about our natural resources? Urghh...!! we have been reading ,hearing and quite often writing about these since our school days. People around the world better know Mt. Everest than Nepal. All our buddhimans (wise) and the most talktaive  media frenzy oldies who run the youth leadership dramas by taking most of the credit themselves and never ever offering youth the required roles have always flaunted about our natural heritage that are underutilised, undermanaged.

People know everest but why not Nepal? Isn't it high time that we start branding our country. Little voices have been raised in this issue.Efforts have been made but that is not enough.So this year, let us all raise our voice for the country. Let us all strive for excellence at what we do. Let us all do as we say. This democracy day, let us all celebrate NEPALDOM. I am pretty sure, the future is great and beautiful just like our country. Let us all take our nation to new heights and grow along with it as happy and prosperous citizens of a prosperous country. Cheers..!!!!