Why Does Mama Kathmandu display Sociopathic tendencies?

In society, the Magician controls the dynamics in power, wealth, education, prestige, status, skills of leadership, information, knowledge of political processes, ability to communicate and organize in the nation. The Magician is wealthy, educated, prestigiously employed, and well-exposed to the world outside of him.

In her Nepali family, Mama Kathmandu controls the dynamics in power, wealth, education, prestige, status, skills of leadership, information, knowledge of political processes, ability to communicate and organize. Mama Kathmandu is wealthy, educated, prestigiously employed, and well-exposed to the world outside of Nepal. In Nepal, Mama Kathmandu is of mixed pedigree but is primarily Brahmin, Newar and Chhetri.

Mama Kathmandu is a Magician.

 

Let's admit it, the elites in Kathmandu have felt for quite a while that they are privy to knowledge and access that the rest of the country don't. Whether it is earned or not is debatable. Whether it is a good thing or not is debatable. But no Nepali can deny that Kathmandu has a superiority complex compared to the rest of the country.  Kathmandu has enjoyed privileges and opportunities that the rest of Nepal has not.

When a Magician gets so carried away with the "magic show" that they are putting on for the benefit of the Common Man that they cannot distinguish it from reality, they can get into trouble. And this was the problem with Kathmandu.

In many ways, the center of power in Kathmandu for decades can be visualized in concentric circles. The center of power in Nepal for decades had been the Royal Palace. In the Panchayat system, the King and the Royalists represented the center most circle down below. Around that core circle was the Nepalese army and Sri Paanch ko Sarkar--the bureaucrats in the Nepali government.

So what does Mama Kathmandu have to do with a Sociopath, you might ask? Well, in many ways, Mama Kathmandu has, over the last few centuries, been conducting the 'magic show' in Nepal. She has been doing it quite effectively. And in some ways I feel that she has lost touch with what is the magic show and what is reality.

As they say, you can fool some of the people some of the time. And you can fool all of the people all of the time. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. So, as good as Mama Kathmandu was as a Magician, as it turns out, she could not fool all of the people all of the time. The Maoists called out the bluff of the Mama Kathmandu Magician. The rest of Nepal was fooled and had remained so for decades. But the Maoists were not. The Maoists exposed the reality behind the facade of the brave Gurkhas that Nepal had painted to the world by directly challenging the Royal Nepalese Army. The Maoists, themselves having the blood of the brave Gurkhas, challenged the status quo. They challenged the Constitutional Monarchy Magic show. And in doing this, the Maoists functioned as a Journalistic force. They stated that they sought to expose the monarchy for what it was--a facade.

Before the Maoists came around, the magic show from Narayanhiti Palace was in full swing. The King was the Wizard of Oz. And Kathmandu was the Emerald City. But it was the Maoists who came into the Emerald City of Kathmandu and asked everyone else to take off their green shades and observe reality as it should be (according to the Maoists), without the Wizard (the Magician)--the King.

What was Nepal before the Maoists?
Imagine this scenario. Imagine that a Magician is putting on a show. He is so immersed in showing that the magical powers he is displaying is real that he forgets that there is a reality beyond his display of magical powers. What would happen? At that point the Magician would get super-arrogant. He would feel that he has a greater grasp on the laws of nature than anyone else around him. That is why he can bend the laws of nature at will. After all, that is what magic appears to be. Bending of the laws of nature is what a magician appears to be doing. In reality, the Magician is bending the minds of his audience so that it appears like he has special privilege to bend the laws of nature that no one else has the power to do.

That is what the Kings of Nepal were doing before the Maoists called their bluff. That statement is an over-simplification of course. There were many democratic forces trying to call the King's bluff. But the Maoists were the only ones who did it with the force required to topple the monarchy. Again, I am not saying that toppling the Monarchy was good. I am not saying that toppling the Monarchy is bad. All I am saying is that the Maoists were the first force to see the Monarchy as such a big threat to the Common Man to do something about it. They were the first force to concretely take the kind of action that would shut down the magic show known as the Constitutional Monarchy as performed by the Shah dynasty for good.