The writing on the wall

Devendra Gautam

WAYN? 

What is the full form of the above acronym?

Let’s hope many of our modern, social media-savvy youths have the answer. After all, they are not mere consumers of all things digital, or are they?

Without beating about the bush, let’s crack the world. 

Where are you now? That’s what it means. Plain and simple, isn’t it?

You see, the Western world, the superpower in particular, doesn’t have time for long expressions. Perhaps it feels exasperated with them as it still has the responsibility to civilize the ‘brutes’, a number of wars to win and many other battlefronts to open, march toward another era of prosperity, planets to conquer, insurmountable challenges like famine, poverty and illiteracy to win over, a fast-heating Earth to cool down a few degrees, to name just a few. 

So, Robert continues to become Bob, William has to make do with plain, simple and simply unimaginative Bill (Pay the climate bill, will you, Bill?), Jonathan becomes Joe (poor Joe!), Anthony becomes Tony, so on and so forth.

Back to WAYN. Thanks to social media, such is the situation that every sapien knows where every other sapien is. Social media is replete with your friends, friends’ friends, friends’ friends’ friends and totally unacquainted ones eating at some hip and happening restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall outlet or a myriad types in between, flying somewhere or travelling by road to some place or the other. Even if the user doesn’t share, myriad apps on your devices know what you do 24/7 and you get feed on your social media pages based on your surfing history and othr activities. Big brother far more powerful than George Orwell’s creation is watching you, bro.  

Nowhere man

Our obsession of updating the whole world about every minute of our life is simply great. After all, life is a reality show and we all are celebrities in our own right with a huge fan base, right? 

For example, even if the sapien in question is a larger-than-life persona, why does he have to tell the whole world that he is leaving his posh apartment in Nepal’s Big Apple for his hometown in the backwaters for ‘n’ number of days? Is this important announcement not akin to telling some criminal elements to come and try their luck?

If the person in question really empathizes with that section of humanity whose needs have remained unfulfilled, there surely are a thousand ways to serve. For example, the gentleman can will his vast empire in the name of some charity or can give away some part of proceeds from his cash cow to some noble cause, fund education of disadvantaged children, so on and so forth. 

But he surely does not have to send out that ‘come, rob me when I am gone’ invite in this free country where anyone can enter every nook and cranny of this country out of his own free will and leave it at the time of his choosing with his loot or choose to stay on in for reasons best known to him and him alone. 

The gentle soul needs to keep in mind that his big and open heart is putting others living in the same neighbourhood at a great risk. 

A big heart aside, nor do we need to send out our condolences to bereaved families whenever heads of state or government, Noble laureates, athletes, singers, etc pass away untimely or otherwise. 

If we are to celebrate every triumph and mourn every loss, we will have nothing else to do, in this life and lives to come.  

In such a case, we will be lost, completely. In that case, the answer to ‘WAYN?’ will most probably be: Nowhere, man. 

Thinking deeper, WAYN is not only about the physical location of an individual. It is also about the station of life that the sapien in question is in. What professional feat has the individual achieved? What academic degree has the sapien obtained? Has the person arrived?

Where are we headed?

It’s a scary question. I doubt if our leadership and bureaucracy, as rudderless as they can be, have a definite answer to this question. 

Given the shape of the republic, every Ram, Shyam and Gopal can say that we are heading from troubles to more serious troubles.  

Our ministers and senior government officials are globe-trotters, of course. From Gaza to Moscow to New York to Hamburg to Beijing to Delhi to London to Timbuktu or any other place in between, they have been everywhere. The world is their oyster, after all.   

Finding them abroad, attending those glitzy international conclaves and signing agreements of all sorts without a thought for the present and future consequences for the country is no big deal. They are everywhere and nowhere at a time when the world is in deep turmoil and Nepal is not at peace with itself and the rest of the world. 

The leadership seems to have no agenda for the country, no roadmap for the future, as their gestures and postures at numerous international fora show. 

This, at a time when a unipolar world order is giving way to a multipolar one, marked by an unprecedented rise of our neighbours, among other countries, and a free fall in the fortunes of a chaotic republic. 

Thousands of Nepalis thronging the country’s only international airport in operation point at a multiple organ failure of this fledgling state and so do those returning home in coffins. 

Every new dawn brings in this kleptocrats’ paradise fresh new scams involving the senior-most political leadership and the bureaucracy. 

In this context, Nepali versions of Louis the XIV will be making a huge mistake by taking the instance of a crowd of loan shark victims storming a high-security Parliament, one of the no-go areas in the heart of the federal capital, as a one-off incident. 

In fact, this is one more instance of people telling the rulers to get their act together before it’s too late. Both the self-styled makers of our destiny and their powerful handlers would do well to read the writing on the wall before it’s too late.