Today should have been a holiday on the occasion of our President’s return from India but the declaration was rolled back by the government owing to public uproar and criticism over their original decision. Now, as many of our keyboard warriors have done, I would have liked to express my displeasure at this trend of declaring holidays too but there’s just one problem – I like these holidays (or days off, if you will). My office runs on the government calendar and, unlike our underworked government folks, I actually am overworked for six days a week and hence the idea of an entire day spent doing nothing is very appealing – thank you very much.
Folks of a certain age will be familiar with a song, Holiday by The Scorpions, that goes, ‘Let me take you far way, you would like a holiday’. I’ve always suspected that to be a rhetorical question if it even qualifies as a question in the first place. Honestly, who wouldn’t like a holiday? That most of us will get as far away as our living room couch is beside the point because there is no such thing as an ‘unnecessary’ holiday. Oh I don’t need another holiday, said no one ever. So then, that begs the distinctly un-rhetorical question – what is up with all this collective whining?
There seem to be an awful lot of folks sitting at home whining over the internet about our so called ‘holiday’ mentality – rather ironically during the down time provided by the same holiday declaration. It’s probably the same people who will get all excited at rumors of a ‘bandh’ and the possibility of a day off and then go on to complain endlessly about how this ‘bandh’ culture is affecting their lives.
Country will receive rainfall for next few days: MFD
Apparently, it’s just fashionable to complain about these ‘free’ holidays in Nepal. Oh, it hampers our economic competitiveness, it will restrict our FDI inflow, promote brain drain, turn us all into lazy, holiday reliant slouches, hamper our reconstruction efforts, reduce our collective fertility and probably lead to large scale cancer among the populace. Ok, the last two reasons were straight out of the ‘Patanjali Handbook of Negative Advertising’ but you get the point. All of this grumbling comes off as a little strange in a country with a six-day working week and zero regard for the concept of work life balance. Of all the bloody things to whine about in Nepal, a holiday should be at the bottom of the list.
It’s not like a strict holiday policy will make us competitive all of a sudden but what it will do is give some overworked folks a brief respite, give them time to spend with their families and perhaps fine tune that work life balance. If we really want to whine, then how about following the ‘INGO policy’ – give us a two-day weekend and fixed number of days off every year to do whatever the hell we like with them and do away with these ‘national’ holidays. If any freebies are then piled on top of this then perhaps, everyone can join in all this moaning.
But as my friend pointed out (correctly I must admit), all this complaining is more against the ‘political culture’ than of the actual holiday. What is the point of a republic if we are to follow age old customs? Yesterday it was the indulgences of the royal family and today it is the President. This is not what we fought for was the basic essence of his complaint. I must admit I nearly kicked him after hearing the second half of his justification.
Does it really take a state sanctioned holiday, now after almost a decade, to tell us that all we have done is just replaced one king with a couple of dozen would be kings – each one with their own parasitic entourage, a big motorcade, and an even bigger sense of entitlement. Every election cycle we vote for the same jokers and in between their obscene (and often ill-gotten) wealth, their perception of being above the law and an alarming lack of accountability, we frequently like to prove to ourselves that we are less subservient now by collectively taking umbrage at decisions like these.
Getting the government to backtrack on a holiday will probably make them think twice in the future about similar declarations but I would rather have the immediate gratification than risk an aneurysm by trying to compel our government to think ‘progressively’. Maybe we have had a fair few holidays recently but any day in which the working masses, at least in Kathmandu, get some relief from our capital’s many punishments is wholly welcome. And it’s not like there is a paucity of other issues to gripe about. While we might not have earned this ‘free’ holiday, we sure as heck deserved it.
The writer loves traveling, writing, and good food when he is afforded an escape from the rat race. He can be contacted at [email protected]
