DEC 29 -
As I was getting ready for office this Monday, Ranjan (as informal as we have always been to each other) barged into my room with his green converse on. Misusing my perfume all over himself, he came with a plan of getting some new profile pictures for our Facebook accounts. His idea, basically, was to get onto deserted streets and pose like heroes, snapping some ‘masterpieces’ for our profiles.
As the photo session had just begun to take some momentum near Babarmahal, Kamal sir (news coordinator of the Post) rang me up and assigned to cover the banda organised by the Nepali Congress.
Leaving the photo-shoot aside, I turned around, and ran for Baneshwor chowk, where Pranav dai, a fellow reporter at the Post was waiting for me in a press vehicle.
The first observation of the banda began with a boy, probably of 10 to 12 years, hammering his bamboo rod on a bicycle passing by near Baneshwor. Waving the starry NC flag tied at one end of the rod and aiming his enraged eyes towards the person riding bicycle, the boy threatened to harm the person if he refused to abide by the banda’s rules.
Helpless, the person quietly got off his vehicle and while he tunnelled through the dark smoke that tyres burning aside were emitting, adult NC cadres were seen congratulating the little boy, for he had successfully injected fear into an innocent fellow citizen.
As the vehicle moved along Singha Durbar and Bhadrakali to New Road skipping the burning tyres and wooden logs, Pranav dai explained me how a gang of NC cadres stopped our vehicle and tried to vandalise it near Minbhawan.
The driver took liberty to plunge vehicle into one-ways through the interiors of New Road, where not a single shop could be seen operating.
Observing the elated faces of rickshaw pullers and chatpate sellers whom the banda had benefited, we made our way out from Lainchaur. Students outside the Amrit Science Campus seemed to be having fun by burning tyres and shouting political slogans. As we headed for Durbarmarg through an intersection near Kesar Mahal, a married couple were spotted clicking photos of their child, whom they had perched on the top of an empty traffic island.
After observing the regular protest programmes in front of the government colleges like Amrit Science Campus, Saraswati Campus, Trichandra College, Ratna Rajya College and Balmiki Campus (known for student politics), we were on our way back to office in Tinkune, discussing how effectively the banda had brought the life of the Capital to a standstill. Sapana Pathak, whom we talked to in Baneshwor, said the banda caused her to bear a loss of at Rs 8,000 as she was forced to shut down her beauty parlour. Her irritation contradicted with NC Central Committee member Badri Pandey’s claims that public supported the strike by abiding by the banda’s principle.
Apart from a few phone calls that I had to make once I reached office, my reporting was almost over. Taking my lunch at Baneshwor with Pranav dai, I wondered how one could claim to have been supported by everyone when he forces people to come and stand by his side by breaking off their vehicles and vandalising their shops.
We returned to the office as the news making stuff was yet to be completed. After logging into my Facebook account to check if Ranjan had tagged me the photos yet, I started jotting down words on my computer screen, making up a news for the next day’s edition of the Post.
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