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KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 8
We are all used to gender discrimination, sexual discrimination, caste, creed, class and colour discrimination.
When you walk into a store, you are subject to veritable discrimination.
Has anyone heard of vehicle discrimination? This morning I watched an Al Jazeera documentary on the struggles of junior artistes, already on the fringe, their precarious existence further exacerbated by the pandemic. It was a distressing documentary on people who we view as wallowing in opulent decadence. One had not received a decent role or job in 40 years, while another had to take up peddling cheap women's accessories. How is this story related to our storyline? The actor who wasted four decades in Bollywood purgatory gave a glimpse of vehicle discrimination.
He explained that the industry had a fixed rate for people depending on how they commute to their potential employer's address. If someone commutes on foot, unkempt, the rate is INR 1,500. The rate will soar to INR 3,000 per day if they commute by bike and INR 5,000 by car. It is an outcome of a civilisational feudal or tribal mindset.
How does this connect with our tale? A few days ago, I went to a Nepali catering wedged at a dangerous turn at Sanepa. The gate managers in blue, lined up along the palace promenade, waved me to the back of the parking lot and finally out the gate onto a narrow dark street outside the compound and eventually shunted me into a forlornly unkept pen with wild strands of grass. Several bikes stood in the parking pen full of scattered bricks and stones.
"Don't lock your motorbike," barked the apparition of a manager who seemed to be on the last leg of his life. "How much do they pay you?" I asked imperiously.
"Don't you think they should treat all guests as equals whether they come by foot, bike, car, choppers or drone?"
Despite the political parties making a big noise of the demise of feudalism, the catering palace parties resort to extreme discrimination. There is no point in flogging only gender discrimination until we eliminate discrimination based on bicycles, bikes, cars, Jeeps, buses and legs. We arrive long past the monarchy when the guards at the local five-stars would chase away the locals who went by tempos, shouting: "Hey you, don't bring that contraption here." Licking wounds of humiliation, our young selves would challenge the guards to a duel. Since the Republican party palaces are far more powerful than the five stars in the past, we can no longer earn their wrath. If they detest bikes and bikers, they should hang up a daring warning sign: Bikes and bikers are not allowed, as they allegedly used to do to dogs and Indians during the British Raj.
A version of this article appears in the print on November 9, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
