Topic: Nepal

Things are going badly for Nepal. The BBC reports on clashes in the streets between security forces and opposition activists who are calling for democracy. The government has set curfews, which have hurt tourism, a crucial business in Nepal.

One wonders what King Gyanendra is thinking.

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Topic: Nepal

It is generally in times of stress and trouble that people turn to messiahs, but the Nepali "Buddha boy" is something stranger still: a messiah who will submit to scientific verification.

The 15-year-old has been sitting under a peepal tree for six months, supposedly without eating or drinking. He has also been bitten by a snake — twice. Not surprisingly, he's become an object of pilgrimage (and attendant donations and commerce), and some have come to believe he's the reincarnation of the historical Buddha. Now local leaders are going to allow scientists to study the boy, though without touching him. If nothing else, they can watch to verify whether he indeed remains in meditation all night.

It's stories like these that remind me just how different and alien Asia was when I lived there. It made me remember an incident on our visit to Patan (scroll down to "Is It Real?"), in the Kathmandu Valley:

A boy in the square pointed us toward a monumental carved doorway into the courtyard of an adjacent palace. "Come see! Ritual!" he shouted. Inside the courtyard we discovered a mostly Nepali group of spectators ringing a troupe of masked dancers who shivered and twitched to the rhythms as several young men played bell cymbals and an older man drummed and crooned a strange wordless chant. In the center, one dancer paid elaborate homage to the bloody severed head of a buffalo, next to which an assistant held a butter torch. Eventually the dancers were all given swords covered in tikka (colored powder used for rituals), and they began a slow, whirling group dance.

I can make guesses as to what the ceremony was about, but what stands out is its very strangeness — the wild, matted hair of the masks; the old men underneath dressed as tribal women with earings and bracelets and necklaces; the hypnotic clang of the cymbals and the ragged line of the old man's wordless singing; the raw power of the sacrificed head still trickling blood.

It was moments like that, or being told matter-of-factly about reincarnations and miracles at Kopan Monastery, that made us realize we had stepped into a different world that seemed to function by different rules than the ones we knew and accepted.

I didn't believe in miracles, and I still don't, but it was also ridiculous to imagine that all these earnest monks were simply lying. So what was going on? I don't know. Indeed, if you're looking to not-know, I strongly recommend a visit to the Indian subcontinent. There is value in discovering the limits of your own explanations for things. Ideally, instead of lunging for some new set of explanations, one can learn to accept a level of ambiguity, complexity and obscurity. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know.

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Topic: Nepal

From Overheard in the Office:

Rep: The King of Nepal has declared martial law and has cut off all
communication, so I cannot check the status of that rug order...

As a rule, if the major economic impact on the rest of the world of a country's total collapse is a delay in carpet shipments, nobody is going to care very much that the country is collapsing. A tiny hiccup in oil delivery can shake the world, and big industrial players and consumer markets are important too. But poor little Nepal isn't even a terribly major carpet producer. Its main product is itself, in the form of tourism, but political instability has a way of killing tourism. So now Nepal's major product is, I guess, nothing. (And no, you can't build an export economy out of tiger balm, wooden chess boards and tiny violins.) Which means that no one beyond Nepal is going to do much about its current crisis ? unless, of course, Nepal threatens the economies of larger, more developed nations (cf. Afghanistan, an economic basket case if ever there was one, but a basket case that managed to close the New York Stock Exchange). If you're hunting for international intervention and aid, exporting terrorism is evidently more effective than exporting nothing.

Let's just hope dirt-poor sub-Saharan Africans and Latin Americans don't figure this out, or we're in for exceedingly nasty weather.

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Topic: Nepal

As a followup to my previous post on the situation in Nepal, I want to share with you an email that I received today from the CIWEC Clinic, which offers a bit of hope:

This is a short note to let everyone know that all communication services including telephone and internet have resumed in Nepal. Mobile phones are expected to be off for an indefinite period of time. The streets of Kathmandu are safer than ever before. There have been no bandhs or strikes and a positive mood prevails in the valley.

The Himalayan Rescue Association (HRA) aid posts in the Everest and Annapurna regions in Pheriche and in Manang will be open for the spring trekking season. They will have their own communication systems in place. Tourists planning to come to Nepal for trekking need not cancel their travel plans. The overall security situation in the country seems better and not worse. There are several mountaineering expeditions that will be here for the spring climbing season.

Political party leaders are under house arrest and are starting to be released. We are hopeful for lasting peace in the country.

With warm regards to everyone,

Prativa Pandey, M.D.
Medical Director
CIWEC Clinic Travel Medicine Center
Kathmandu, Nepal

Unfortunately, the latest BBC report is less optimistic. The problem remains that the democratically elected government has utterly failed at two of its most fundamental responsibilities — maintaining a monopoly on violence and holding elections — but the unpopular King Gyanendra is pretty clearly in violation of the law, there's not all that much to indicate that he can handle the Maoist rebellion either, and his takeover only exacerbates the failure to hold elections. The ambiguity and intractability of the situation is reflected in the discussions on nepalbbs.com, where people are less for or against the king than somewhere in the middle, disappointed with the parliament, disheartened by the rebellion, disturbed by the king's suspension of civil liberties, and uncertain what should be done.

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Topic: Nepal

As you may know, King Gyanendra of Nepal recently sacked the government of Sher Bahadur Deuba and put himself in charge. When I first read about the move, I had a feeling of deja vu: The king had done the same thing — to the same prime minister — in 2001, just days after we'd arrived in Kathmandu.

I don't have all that much to add to the international coverage. But I'm subscribed to the mailing list for the CIWEC Clinic, the best source of Western medicine in Nepal, and today they sent out this email:

The king has taken over in Kathmandu. Immediately after his
announcement all phone lines and internet connections to Nepal were cut.

Many flights are now operating, but the phones and internet are still out as of 4 Feb morning and newspapers and television in Nepal is censored.

Please check http://www.nepalbbs.com for news and information about the situation in Nepal.

Phone lines were never before cut, even during the 1990 revolution or the Royal Massacre in 2001. This is an ominous sign.

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