andolan spring

21 April 2004
Andolan Spring

Four meteorological seasons are recognized in Nepal: winter, pre-monsoon, monsoon, and post-monsoon. These days, a fifth season can be discerned: demonstration season. As soon as the winter fog and chill wore off, people took to the streets, demanding an end to 'regression,' the king's unilateral power grab in the face of the Maoist insurgency, and the implementation of more equitable power sharing. In the service of their goal, the demonstrators from the five parties and their student wings have caused considerable slow down in the business of the city.

For example, yesterday I thought an hour would be more than adequate to cover the six kilometers from my place to the Fulbright Office, giving me time to do an errand before going to my language class. Forty minutes later, I hadn't even left the Patan side of the Bagmati River, because students at the Engineering Campus on the main road out of Patan were burning an effigy of regression and throwing bricks at the arctic camouflage-clad soldiers. The microbus that I first boarded was turned around after driving only a few hundred meters, and passengers had to disembark because the bus was not going to be able to get past the blocked main road. I noticed that a number of vehicles were taking a narrow, rutted side street to get around the protest. I hailed a taxi and set off that way. The side streets are not built to handle through traffic, being only one lane wide in many places, unpaved, and lined with brick walls. Besides, everyone else had the same idea for getting around the demonstration. Finally, in the time I could have walked to the Bagmati Bridge, we reached the river, and from there it was smooth sailing into Kathmandu.

The thing about these demonstrations is that you never know which sections of the city will be affected until you run into walls of soldiers and riot police and see the bricks littering the street. The previous day, I had gone to retrieve some photos from my trip to Khumbu, only to discover that the street was closed to vehicular traffic. Riot police in body armor and plexiglass shields were facing the protesters in a tense stand-off on either side of the street. From time to time, the protesters would lob a brick into the street, where it would leave a red smudge. Behind the line of shoulder-to-shoulder soldiers, citizens passed by doing their daily business. This was trickier than it sounds, since most of the shops had rolled down their metal shutters to avoid having their glass windows broken. Some shopkeepers had kept the metal doors up slightly so that they could keep tabs on the goings on outside. They peered out from under the doors ready to slam them down if things heated up. Though all the shutters were down around the photo shop, an armed guard opened the one unprotected glass door and ushered me in. As I headed home, back past the demonstration, one kindly man encouraged to “please go the other way, miss.”

I had planned to return to that area today to do some more errands, but the following email from the embassy convinced me to stay home lest I waste the entire day stuck in a traffic jam:

RESIDENTS OF THE COMMUNITY ARE ADVISED OF THE FOLLOWING TRAFFIC CONGESTION BEING CAUSED BY PROTEST RALLIES. RESIDENTS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID THE BELOW MENTIONED AREAS OF THE CITY. IF TRAVEL IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, RESIDENTS ARE ADVISED TO DETOUR AROUND THE TROUBLE SPOTS USING ALTERNATE ROUTES. FURTHER DIRECTIVES WILL BE FORTHCOMING.

These days, it seems that the agitating political parties have at least as much of a stranglehold on Kathmandu as the Maoists do on the outlying areas. It's hard to identify the good guys in this three-way struggle for control of the country. While I am sympathetic to the political parties' desire for a more equitable, transparent and democratic government, I'm not sure how effective their current means are. The frequent bandhs and protests would seem to hurt the people who live day-to-day, like smalltime vendors and shopkeepers, the most. The student wings of the political parties are extremely active in this season of protests, so students aren't in class. Government property, such as cars and motorcycles, is routinely destroyed in these protests. The armed police force and the army are involved in quelling the protests rather than resolving the Maoist issue.

And yet, the soldiers are incredibly human and humane in some ways. As they line the streets everyday, they surely get bored and, like anyone else, have personal errands to do. So you'll see soldiers buying fruit or nail clippers or shoe polish from streetside vendors, or congregating in a cyber café, or shaking hands with a friend who just happens to be passing by.

The craziness of Kathmandu has a way of wearing on the psyche, demonstrations or no. Things are just too hectic, noisy and crowded here, and the constant sight of armed soldiers on the streets creates an inescapable undercurrent of tension. Having returned to the city from the peace of Khumbu at the height of the demonstration season, I am pleased to be going back to Khumbu tomorrow to continue my work with the Mountain Institute. Though Khumbu is only a 40-minute flight away, it's a different world. Most everyone there is Buddhist, giving rise to more equitable gender roles between men and women, and much less blatant gawking than in the capitol. In ten days of trekking alone on the last trip, I was never once hassled about being a single woman hiking alone. Soldiers guard the airport in Lukla, and check trekkers entering Namche, the 'capitol' of Sherpa-land, but otherwise are blessedly scarce. Perhaps because of the incredibly tight-knit and prosperous Sherpa communities, Maoists haven't been able to infiltrate into this area. What can they offer people who earn more than ten times the average Nepali annual salary? In many ways, Khumbu seems to be the best of Nepal. The magnificent scenery, with Everest at the heart, doesn't hurt either.

I hope this finds you enjoying a lovely and peaceful spring!