By Devendra Gautam
According to good ole Cambridge dictionary, the word “viral” describes something that spreads quickly and uncontrollably.
Originally used in biology for virus-related infections, it is now more commonly used to describe digital content — like videos, images or memes — that gains explosive popularity as people rapidly share it across the internet.
In viral times like these, marked by the Covid-19 pandemic and the hantavirus scare, apart from several things going viral on the worldwide web all at once, offering a glance of our species’ infinite stupidity, it may not be quite worthwhile to talk about things that are going bacterial. Things going bacterial aren’t going great; they are stuck in a Europe of the mid-1300s — or of this day and age — most probably — with the advent of Donald Trump and the Russia-Ukraine war.
With bacterial outbreaks like the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history that devastated populations across Asia, North Africa and Europe, killing an estimated 25 to 50 million people — up to 60 percent of Europe’s population in the mid-1300s — behind us, let’s move on after spending a fraction of our precious time on this thing called bacterial.
Just like the word ‘viral’, ‘bacterial’ also does not figure in our Veds, Gita, Puranas, Upanishads and very many other scriptures, I guess. These words must have tried hard to sneak into those tomes somehow, but our enlightened ancestors — Rishis, Maharshis, Munis and many more — probably warded them off with great tapasya — through tantra, mantra, yantra, yog, including hathyog and what not — as they were quite veer (brave) and wise too, unlike us who are believed to have one quality in excess and not so much of the other.
Something tells me that you guys will surely find time to read this piece even if you have your hands and minds full, so let me try to make this piece as simple and compelling as possible so that the gatekeeper in charge will also give it a go-ahead.
By the way, this gyan to keep things simple occurred to me after a young uncle, commenting on a (dare I say poetic?) piece in Nepali that traverses the highs and lows of life like the hills and plains of my home district, suggested that I write plain and straight for maximum reach as well as impact. How could I not heed this gem of advice coming from a well-read reader with a razor-sharp mind?
So it becomes my utmost duty to define the adjective called ‘bacterial’, assuming that the enlightened audience, quite busy with other important things like reading my piece, have had no time to look for its meaning.
Bacterial means relating to, caused by, or consisting of bacteria, which are microscopic, single-celled living organisms that can be found everywhere in the world, including inside and on your body.
Now, let’s talk about some of the ‘things’ that are going viral in our small world.
The first phenomenon that’s been going viral for quite some time is our Prime Minister. From a rapper to structural engineer to the mayor of Kathmandu to the premiership, it’s been a phenomenal rise taking merely 15 years!
There was a time, not so long ago, when his black outfit—black t-shirt, black coat and black sunglasses—was all the rage, making him a fashion icon in a society known for hero worship. Even as his kind of outfit was quite popular among the youth, there were speculations that the chief executive was clinging to the black garb on the advice of some Tantric.
And then the absolute black faded into a dazzling white one fine Saturday morning (May 9), marking the start of the newly-introduced two-day weekly holiday.
Two days later, the PM exited the Parliament when the President was reading out the government’s policies and programmes. What prompted the unceremonious move is not clear but here’s hoping that students won’t stage similar walkouts in the midst of lectures in a society where anarchy is not the exception.
Some days later, the PM endorsed our own Yak cheese in his white robe, giving hope that Nepal’s products will go viral like his outfit within the country and beyond in these times of hard economics amid escalating hostilities in West Asia and Europe that have put tremendous strain on an economy that runs largely on fossil fuels.
Harka Raj Rai (Harka Sampang), lawmaker and chair of the Shram Sanskriti Party, is also viral on social media but he has some serious catching up to do, methinks. Anyway, going viral is not the objective, right?
If the sky does not fall, there’s every reason to believe that the PM will last as a phenomenon for quite some time. How long? I leave this question to the future.
Then comes Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia, India’s Minister for Communications and Development of the Northeastern Region.
Minister Scindia talked about his Nepali roots and branches at a program organised in Gangtok to mark the silver jubilee of the annexation of Sikkim into India as its 22nd state.
Indeed, it’s great to have a well-educated and cultured political leader who is part Nepali, loves Nepal and the Nepalis, interacts with Nepali-speaking people and plucks tea leaves with Nepali workers of tea estates on occasions. But has Scindia, the scion of a powerful political family with historic linkages with Nepal, ever bothered to at least request the government leadership in New Delhi not to take steps that harm a neighbour and a friend?
Over a sip or two in Sikkim, did it dawn on Scindia that Indian restrictions on Nepali tea have given bilateral relations a far bitter taste?
Back in Delhi, will he, in the coming days, months and years, strive to become a powerful voice advocating for a fundamental reset of relations that have sold Nepal down the river, from the Gandaki, Koshi to the Karnali?
Both our PM and India’s Minister Scindia are young, dashing, full of potential and quite popular. Going viral is fine for a season or two but will they also bother to do some serious work that will leave lasting legacies?
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