Miscellaneous
The heart of the matter
While criticising politicians, we often forget that those among us are also to be blamed for our woesAbhinawa Devkota
A few days into the blockade, I was confronted with the request to find petrol for my friend’s bike. I could not say no to someone who had helped me avoid sitting on the roof of a crowded bus just inches below the wires that hang low on our roads or that of perilously standing at the door of a moving micro, trying to balance my body like a contortionist while the vehicle wobbled its way through potholes and boulders.
So I looked around to see if there was anyone involved in selling oil at a jacked-up price. Nakabandi and the resulting scarcity of oil and cooking gas hit us where it hurts the most—our everyday life. With shops running out of goods, industries pulling down the shutters and roads getting emptier, we were forced to remind ourselves of the time when our forefathers ate what they grew, wore what they stitched, used beasts to haul loads and burned firewood instead of kerosene and cooking gas. But things had not come to a grinding halt yet. The parallel market (or the black market) quickly replaced the traditional one, and, capitalising on the scarcity, became a reliable purveyor of petroleum products and other essentials—to those who could afford it. While many might defend such tactics as a necessity brought about by corruption and ineptitude on part of rogue government officials and politicians, it is still hard to defend those involved in this illegal racketeering.
The black marketeers were not that hard to find either. Our first transaction happened at an apparel shop in my neighbourhood where a middle-aged woman was selling oil stored in a drum hidden behind a rack of clothes. The second time the bike needed a refill, it was at a barber’s shop where the barber (who hails from the plains) narrated to us, with much pride and elation, the saga of fetching oil from his home near the border to Kathmandu despite the government’s efforts to curtail such activities.
There was no turning back after that. Why wait in queues for hours in government-designated petrol pumps and return empty-handed most of the time when you can get your tank filled in your neighbourhood? We bought petrol from a shoe shop (a portion of it had burned down the next time we went there), at a parking lot, from taxi drivers and, yes, at a school.
After going high and dry for a couple of days, we stumbled upon a contact that told us how a reputed school in the city was selling petrol during after-school hours. Not ready to believe, but unwilling to give up, we went to the school, knocked on the gate and found ourselves face to face with the peon.
“We are here for petrol,” I said sheepishly, still unable to believe that a shady business might be operating from such a place.
“Come in,” he gestured, with the excitement of a businessman sensing a sale.
To our surprise, this guy was operating what looked like a mini petrol pump from inside his quarter. It was not just gallons but drums of petrol and diesel, stacked neatly in a row against the wall waiting to be sold to those willing to pay a premium.
Oil might as well be the perfect metaphor of a modern-day city. Dark and filthy in its raw form but also highly mutable and dynamic, it is what runs our factories, turns the turbines, burns in our kitchens, and gives life to our vehicles. It is the drug that keeps our cities alive and kicking. But in recent days in Nepal, it has also become the symbol of collective greed and apathy towards one another, a byword for corruption and duplicity that exists at the heart of our society.
You never know, your next-door neighbour might have struck rich overnight by selling oil at multiple times the market price, or that the vegetable vendor in your locality might have constructed a new home in his village out of petrorupees (no pun intended) he made in the Valley, or that the humble teacher who lives in the neighbourhood and walks to his school every day wearing a worn out Dhaka topi might have hoarded dozens of cylinders of gas and gallons of petrol on his top floor.
This is the reason why we must start looking beyond government employees and politicians when it comes to corruption. It is true that the ruling elites have divided this country into their personal fiefdoms where the only governing motto seems to be ‘Do as you like’, but it is also equally true that there are many among us who do not balk at the idea of robbing one another when the opportunity comes. That the leaders at the top are rogue does not give us the license to behave in the same way.
We filled our bike, thanked the peon and hurried out to the gate. It was dark outside, except for the headlight of yet another bike that had come for the same purpose. As we made our way back home we could see vehicles waiting in queues around petrol pumps throughout the city; some people were desperately trying out their contacts to make sure they could keep their wheels running. Like others in this land, we knew where they would get their next refill. It would not be a petrol pump. That’s for sure.