On the journey

After failing to drive by myself, cab was the best medium of transport for me. Though they were successful in ripping my money I can’t argue how convenient they were. Like one of my uncle said, cab in context of Kathmandu is way better than having a car: you don’t have to endure driving in mad traffic, you don’t have to queue up in lines forever to get petrol, you don’t have to worry about parking, you don’t have to pay for insurance, you don’t have to hire a driver, all you have to do is stand in the street and just wave your hand and the cab would be there. If you get into a traffic jam, just get out of that cab and walk few blocks and wave your hand again: how’s that for a convenience?

Since my last time in Kathmandu, I noticed that the faces driving the cabs have changed considerably. Earlier there used to be more elderly guys, now I realized there were more teenagers (and little older) particularly with Mongolian features. I am not raising any ethnic issue here, but mere depiction of socio-economic changes.

Although Kathmandu is very small it does take a long time to reach places owing to traffic jams and one way street, that will give you ample of time to mingle with the cab drivers. Most cab drivers I found were very extroverts, and majority of them had some say on current affairs and politics. I sensed if I ride different cabs all day I will have pretty good grasp of what’s going around. In this post I will try to recall on some of those encounters.

One cabbie was a middle aged man; he told me that he used to drive for some influential administrator in Sikkim before. After coming back to Nepal he wanted to own and drive a cab. He had hard time establishing collateral for auto loan despite showing his inherited family land outside Kathmandu. Then using one broker, he paid NRs. 33,000 and got his loan approved from Himalayan Bank without any collateral.

Another middle age cabbie was no stranger to politics; he claimed to have every insight on Nepalese corruptions. His articulate presentation with lots of references made me realize that he was more than a big mouth. I was impressed with one his anti-corruption ideas: he wanted to have a single Land Registration Certificate (LRC) for all the property. What we have now is that one can have multiple LRC for multiple properties. His logic was to tie them together in one and periodically update it with every new purchase. This way no one can hide their unaccountable property. I like this idea, the concept is quite similar to Social Security Number (SSN) here in the states, using SSN one can easily pull out information (credit histories, criminal histories etc) on the subject. I talked with some of my relatives (government officials) later, and they said this concept is already being thought of and they are going over the possibilities.

Every cabbie had their own story: some funny, some tragic, some simply guff’s etc. However, I found similarity in one of their attitude (this holds true for majority of people residing in Nepal); no matter what the cause of disturbances/agitations in streets was, they always brand it as “Andolan” (which literally means revolution). When I think of revolution I recall my history class in elementary school where I read that French people revolted to over throw the monarch, the monarch who suggested the people to eat cake when told that they don’t have enough bread to eat. Revolution for me was seeing people ignore the autocratic curfew and march forward for the rights of people, justice and democracy.

So I was baffled when people termed revolution to incidents like bus driver blocking the road to protest a cabbie punching the bus driver, micro buses stopping their service in protest of a traffic snatching driving license from one of the driver, students blocking the road in front of their college in a protest against a bike hitting one of the student etc. Whenever petty incidents like this happens there is bound to be traffic jams, and when you ask the people what happened the answer is always the same: “perhaps some Andolan”. And, when you find that petty cause and ask people how silly thing like that be termed as Andolan, the answer is always the same: “this is what happens in Loktantra (Nepalese version of republic democracy)”.

And then I begin to wonder, how right Dor Bahadur Bista was on Fatalism