A scorched Nepal: The story of our Prometheuses and Neros

 A thick envelope of dust. The layer is so thick that the man behind the wheel, in all likelihood, is finding it quite difficult to find which is the road—a sliver cut through landslide-prone terrains—and which is not. Each vehicle passing through the artery leaves behind a cloud, making it very very difficult for every motorist to navigate the stretch and adding to the agonies of hapless passengers. 

K garne? Little inconveniences like these are welcome in our march for progress and prosperity, right?

Still, there’s a pattern to road construction and expansion works in Nepal. 

Monstrous earth-moving equipment start attacking our fragile terrains in the holy name of road expansion, exposing stretches destabilized during the earlier phases to greater risks. Yours truly is not an authority figure in road works, but his observation is that a fresh phase of expansion/upgradation work begins not long after the completion of an earlier phase, causing further destabilization of terrains that are too fragile to meet burgeoning developmental requirements of humanity. 

Ever-increasing vehicular pressure perhaps makes expansion/upgradation works mandatory, but have our exceptionally capable planners, policymakers, engineers and contractors seriously assessed whether these terrains can withstand this much of pressure? 

Leave aside the cities, towns and metropolises, road construction has become synonymous with development in rural Nepal also. 

Can young and fragile hills withstand a constant onslaught of heavy equipment? Who cares? 

Almost every ward chair of this country has at least a dozer and they all need work to make a small fortune during their tenure if they are to make it to provincial and central levels through periodic elections. Who does not? Contractors, engineers, their near and dear ones, elected representatives and their masters, they all need work and tidy profit out of it. 

Therefore, a beautiful hill that you saw a few days ago during a journey to your hometown may have vanished — in the holy name of development. Mother Nature and Father Sky won’t be surprised, and you shouldn’t be, either. 

What’s more, if you are an absentee landowner, your house and sheds may have been bulldozed without notifying you. Who told you to build them and obstruct development in the first place? 

And don’t lose your sleep if your maize fields and paddy fields become roads overnight. The country will march toward progress and prosperity through what used to be your property, and you should feel proud about it. 

Back to the road. Beyond a small republic of dust, forests burn — hectares and hectares of them, leaving nearby settlements in grave peril. 

Who taught our arsonists how to make fire? Prometheus? 

Surprisingly, the Shers (lions) of Singhadurbars (Lion Palaces) at the federal, provincial and local levels are nowhere around. By the way, yours truly read somewhere that only a huge forest consisting of a complete food chain can provide for the lion king and his kin. 

This means the beings at our lion palaces are famished, right? 

Quite feebly, perhaps, they are invoking Lord Indra with their rusty mantras and mostly-forgotten rituals to bring rain, leaving the divine rainmaker unimpressed and the woods burning. 

Local people, meanwhile, are throwing their lives in line to put out the flames. Alas, water, mud and green fodder are not enough to save villagers and animals from the wildfires that feed on dry leaves and woods that have marched to the very courtyards of settlements abandoned by immensely capable Nepalis searching for promised land that can do justice to their aspirations. 

Yours truly observed all this during a recent journey to his home district in Western Nepal. 

Per history books, Emperor Nero would play the flute while Rome kept burning night after night after night. Yours truly does not know much about the alien corn of Rome and its fate under Nero.  Back home, amid the flames and cries for help from a humanity caught in a wildfire expanding all across the republic with increasing intensity, yours truly hears a peculiar sound, which is getting increasingly audible. 

Is this the sound of music coming from our Lion Palaces? Has yours truly lost his mind?  Yours truly has no idea.

Ignorance is bliss in a fools' paradise, isn't it?