Just found this on my e-diary while clearing/cleaning up some old files. Its a musing from some two years ago (written on 2 September 2010 at 11:07 to be precise), I don’t recall what prompted me to jot these lines down then, but when I saw these this morning, I thought I might have written these last week or the week before. If you follow the news and happenings from the sub-continent then you’d know why!
When I was growing up in a traditional, yet fairly liberal Bramhin household, I might have looked like a God-fearing child growing up to to be a God-fearing adult. By high-school, most of the religious beliefs instilled in me had washed away. By the time I went to study intermediate in science, and came out of it, I was probably not an atheist, but certainly an agnostic. By the time I finished my undergraduate, I was an atheist too, and have been since. When I think of growing up, hearing about Krishna’s Leela, his misdemeanours since childhood, be it stealing, harassing girls, or later being polygamous, causing war between brothers and what not, it was rather strange to see people worshipping him as a God, a role model. Thankfully I didn’t take that literally, imagine where I would be now if I had! The question that boggles my mind is this: why do we still revere mythical characters like Krishna? What does it say about our own cultural mindset? That it is OK to engage in misdemeanours as long as you also do some good? Although I fail to find what good that mythical character Krishna really did! The most popular caricature of the character still revolves around stealing butter and chasing young pretty girls. So what was the real message his story gave to our societies. That it’s OK to hang out in every gallis and chowks and tease young girls passing by? That minor theft is not to be taken seriously and that its part of growing up?
…and the wait continues to start on the new job (the actual wait is for the permit to travel to the country where the job is!).
In the meantime I’m working in Nepal – couldn’t get SPSS for my number-crunching job so got and learnt STATA (still learning actually), and becoming fairly comfortable with it! Yet to write of the crunched numbers 
Most importantly got time to read (still too lazy to write much though!) and have finished a few good books 
Just finished Michel Peissel’s Tiger for Breakfast, and currently reading Solo by Rana Dasgupta (pic below).
Oh, did I mention I got married recently?!? Life’s well so far
I think it should have come about 7 years earlier – but better late than never. Headlines everywhere are that the Himalayan nation has voted to become the newest republic ending 240 years of monarchy. But I particularly liked the following headline on the BBC WorldService Radio at 03:00 GMT -
Nepalese decide to get rid of the king, without knowing who to replace him with.
Only last week every news item on Nepal was about how well the CA election was conducted, and about the Maobadi’s strong showing. Now it seems the country is back to “normal”, with police beating the monks. What a disgrace!
BBC News piece about the protest here.
I didn’t think I’d be glued in front of my computer screen to get results of CA election in Nepal, but I am. And my fingers are tired hitting Refresh button a zillion times since early morning (in fact since last night). Defeats of MKN, Bamdev Gautam etc. are some notable surprises in the early stages. And it seems the Maoists will emerge as the largest party in the CA judging by early results.
And of course living afar, getting up-to-date information is sometimes frustrating to say the least. Websites are often slow, and some seem to have stopped working, like the kantipuronline frontpage (see screenshot), although its election results page is working fine as I write these lines.
Too much traffic to handle?
The most reliable website, and with most up-to-date information I am getting so far is from MySansar – worth a click if you are trying to find out what is happening in Nepal (especially in KTM).
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