privileges and more....

French Revolution of eighth grade history classes introduced me to the word ‘privilege’. It was then that I learnt about the perks of privileged people who were tax exempted and also about the peasant s who were burdened with taxes of all sort. That was where my understanding of ‘privileges’ began and ended. Although I was familiar to the various ‘privilege’ cards that endowed my parents with various offers, it never stuck to me if my parents were actually ‘privileged’ by any means.

With passing years and better understanding of how money and power makes everything go around in our daily life, I have finally figured out to certain extent about what may be kept inside the ‘privilege’ bracket and who are those lucky few ‘privileged’ in every possible way.

The first time I realized about being unprivileged was during the procedure of obtaining my citizenship. Fresh out of school, I was all excited to finally have proof of my identity as a citizen of Nepal. But little did I know of the fussy and lazy government officials who did everything to delay me from laying hands on my citizenship. And yes the long stinking queue of people under the scorching heat made it even worse. Just when I was discussing the hardship of obtaining my citizenship, one of my cousin simply gushed over how his citizenship card was brought to his doorstep from district headquarter of Illam. That was his ‘privilege’ of not even having to move an inch for his citizenship that too brought from hundreds of kilometers away district.
My same cousin seemed to be double privileged when his driving license was handed over to him inside the comfort of his living room. No hassles of driving test and paperwork for him. That was one privilege I didn’t know of back then.

Living in a country where nepotism and abuse of authority are on full swing, it didn’t come to me as a surprise when my friend casually said how he got ‘choose’ his mobile number as per his convenience. Thanks to high ranked government officer dad who pulled few strings to get his dear son an easy order of numbers. No wonder, anyone can memorize his mobile number after the first dial. And every time I dial his number, it reminds me of ‘headline making’ long queues of people who waited days to get their mobile numbers. That too with not a single repeated digit. (Talk of being unprivileged!!)

Of late, there seems to be only one category of lucky few who have clinched the privileged of the most privileged spot. And this lucky few are the ones who still cruise around in their bikes and cars each day without having to fret over the acute shortage of petrol. Yes, they are the ones who have ample amount of petrol stocked up to last for weeks. Even if they run out of petrol, stocking their petrol tanks again will just be a phone call away.
Ironically the same privileged folks never seem to get enough complaining about the ever worsening condition of the country. Since they are ‘privileged’ enough to make frequent trips to the developed (and seemingly cleaner) parts of the world, they find faults in everything about their own country. Right from how unmanaged the roads are to how uncivilized majority of we Nepalese are. From what they see and read about the hardship an average person in Nepal has to go through, they make conclusions about how Nepal is not worth living.

They aren’t the ones who have to worry about managing square meal for their family amidst shortage of cooking gas and kerosene oil. Neither do they know how difficult it is to not only to get the 5 liter of petrol (after waiting for hours at stretch) but also being extra cautious about preventing it from getting stolen. Same goes for the hardship of waiting for public vehicles and hanging on them to reach our destination that is beyond their imagination. Rather such crammed buses and hanging passengers tickle their funny bone.

The deeper my understanding of privileges and privileged people get, the more under privileged I feel. With all due envy towards the privileged people’s lives, I would like to ask them to step down from their privileged lives every once in a while just so that they could value their ‘privileges’ more. Hopefully that would bring an end to their attitude of looking down towards the majority of Nepalese people who are far from leading privileged lives like theirs , yet are going strong!!