| Biswo |
Posted
on 08-Apr-04 03:49 PM
One day I , along with my two friends, was going to Rampur from Bharatpur. Three wheelers ply on the spur from Bharatpur to Rampur and are major transport mean in addition to rickety Mercedes Benz buses. In Chitwan, Rampur campus is famous for being famous. Very few people know that it has the biggest library in Chitwan, the best horticulture garden, and Urbana-Champagne like milieu for work/study.People just know that Rampur campus is famous.
At Bharatpur, while waiting for a three wheeler to go to Rampur, I noticed a statue of Mahendra in front of Chaubis Kothi. How many of us have noticed that most of the statues in our countries are so hideous that you don't know whether the sculptor was trying to make a statement by making such hideous statue or it was just the extent of his ability.I consider the statue of Lekh Nath at Sorakhutte, Bhanubhakta at Rani Pokhari, Birendra(or Mahendra?) at Kopundol height at the same level. It is not the soot or other filth stacked in the pedestal, it is not the avian excrement scattered around the statue, it is those statues themselves: they don't have any new technique, they are like two dimensional cartoons drawn so that lifelessness rather than a statement would be exuded. I, however, have found some of the statues really beautiful: like Yeti at RNAC, some of Rana statues at Tudikhel and BP's statue at Chipledhunga at Pokhara. Any sculptor critic out there to help me understand what is going on?
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As we boarded a relatively crowded three wheeler to Rampur, the statue of Mahendra receded. The three wheeler driver had employed a mentally slow man as a money collector. Thirty years ago, salts in Chitwan were not iodized which increased the danger for a pregnant women to deliver mentally challanged kids. Somehow, we see such children in Chitwan more frequently, though they are less and less these days. They stand there as a testimony of how state took care of citizens thirty or so years ago.
When I talked to the driver of the three wheeler, he told me about his plight which still haunts me. He addressed the overall antipathy towards three wheelers in KTM. The three wheeler itself was a city reject: the driver had just moved from KTM. "We are blamed for pollution, and we are ordered to move out. People treat us like filth. But we are not the major pollutant. No one ever did a study to prove this. Why are the garment factories not targetted? People are targetting us because it is easy to target us." He again and again claimed that it was easy to target three wheelers than the big buses, and it was easy to target big buses than garment factories. I think he voiced what ordinary people always felt in Nepal: there is descrimination against those in the lower stratum of our stratified social world. We descriminate against poors, we descriminate against dalits, we descriminate against Madhesis, we descriminate against Himalis, we descriminate against the other castes, we descriminate against women: think about this, our whole society has been built on the weak foundation of prejudice and descrimination.
I don't know about KTM, but I knew something similar happened in New Delhi. In 1998, supreme court ordered to move old three wheelers and buses out of the New Delhi. The goverment almost immediately implemented the order. But, as environmental groups later insisted, chemical factories, garment factories etc were evidently more pollutant generating but were spared.[An order to target such factories near Taj Mahal is yet to be fully implemented.] The govt would try to negotiate with the richer factory owners, but such mercy is not shown towards the poorer bus owners/three wheeler owners. But as it is becoming increasingly clearer in our world, no one negotiates with the poorer or weaker ones, and that drives them to be increasingly more desparate in their pursuit.
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| meera |
Posted
on 08-Apr-04 03:58 PM
Methinks the statues are hideous coz its supposed to be modern art on in this case, modern statue. U know what I mean!!!!!!!
As for the 3 wheelers, I know they had banned Bikram tempo and substituted it with Safa tempo, a dumb enough move. The government claimed that it gives out no smoke. Aren't they smart enough to know that safa tempo also throws out polluted gas. Its like, what you can't see does not exist. Anyway, I used to hear stories of drivers of 3 wheelers, the taxi drivers had no better luck. But then if you look at it, everyone has problems. Its just that some complain while others don't.
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