Kathmandu I'll soon be seeing you, And your strange bewildering time

New Year's Eve in Kathmandu is dark. "Load-shedding ka system hai, sir" exclaimed our cab driver as we rode down the city's main street to get some dinner. Sixteen hours long - the average power cut. After a good meal in a fancy French restaurant affordable to expats, diplomats and tourists, if you navigate your way through the dark streets once again to find a bar in the city's hip district, be prepared to see a sea of leather-jacket and denim wearing sea of men.

Expecting too much in a city recently going through major political change? I was not unaware. "Now that we have democracy, governance is declining and corruption increasing" quipped another cynical resident. So was the monarchy better? Laughter, and a sigh.

People want to get on with their lives. Democracy is great everyone echoed, and it seemed a big enough change for the residents to handle. They do not want government interference in other aspects of life. A case in point is religion. Visiting the Pashupati (Shiva) Temple Complex amidst a tussle between the Communist government that wishes to replace the shrine's South Indian priests for the last 300 years, with newly appointed Nepali ones (the intention is not to be anti-Indian as it may seem the government clarifies), I expected heavy security, slogans, chaos. The visit went smoothly. In fact more so in my opinion amidst the absence of touts pestering believers to pay for special offerings being made to God by the priests. Since there were no priests at the temple that day, there was no room for brokers. Local volunteers and a handful of security guards managed the crowds. The evening hymns echoed through the complex, sung as is the routine by a local devotee and no high positioned priest. No one seemed to care about the political game that was at play with the temple as its centerpiece. Yes, to many the Shiva idol needed the care it received at the hand of the priests each day. Besides that little bit of remorse, there was no sign of any desire for a change in life within the complex. In the prostrations of the believers there was a sense of relief to be there, whether priests or not, despite politics or not.

Identity politics as exemplified in the case of the Pashupati Temple controversy, corrupt politics as seen in the complaints of the people, interest no one. And both threaten the peace and security of not just Nepal, but states in South Asia. In Kathmandu one can witness a crumbling of daily life as it is continuously infringed by the enforcement of identity other than that of being a citizen of a new democracy and by an establishment of a corrupt public system.