National wait for Godot

In his masterpiece Waiting for Godot, a play written in 1949, Nobel Prize winning writer Samuel Beckett presents two characters - Vladimir and Estragon - who keep on waiting for someone called Godot throughout the entire play. Divided into two Acts, the first Act ends with the two characters waiting for Godot to arrive at an unidentified location. And the second Act of the play too ends with their wait still on. Even if they do not fully know whom they are waiting for and why, they are waiting with the hope that something may happen when Godot arrives. Their wait is interrupted by the arrival of a third character called Pozzo whom the two mistake for Godot because they have never seen the latter before. However, the only thing that happens in this absurd play is the wait for an unknown character for an unknown purpose.

The purpose of this write-up is not to draw a direct parallel between the play Waiting for Godot and the Nepali people’s wait for something to arrive or an event to occur so that everything we have done so far becomes meaningful. The purpose is to see, on a national level, how the object of our ‘wait’ is constantly postponed, almost in an existential and absurd way as depicted in the play by Beckett. We are in a situation where we may not be able to identify Godot even if he arrives. And, for certain, the arrival of what we are waiting for will immediately shift to a wait for something else.

Until April, 2006 Janaandolan II, we all assumed that if we could get rid of the king and have Maoists join the mainstream politics through a peace process, everything would be fine. When that happened, we started to wait for the Constituent Assembly elections with the hope that once those elections take place, our wait would be finally over. With the elections just over, it appeared that the polls were just a beginning of further instability but we continue our wait—maybe once we have the new constitution, everything will be fine, finally.

Hopefully, the fresh wait for the new constitution will be over in May, but it will in no way be an end to our waiting. Political affairs will not smoothen out just because we have a new constitution. There will remain the task of federal division of the country followed by the need to set up federal governments, for which we will again have to wait. As things will continue to look bleak, we will then shift our hope on new elections to be held as per the new constitution, hoping once again that all will be well after that. This will go on and on for many years.

In this perpetual game of wait and hope, we in Nepal are now waiting for the new constitution. It is almost definite that after we have the new constitution, we will ponder yet again and question ourselves: Was this what we were really waiting for?

What I have said should not be regarded as a pessimistic way of looking at things. Just compare it with the existential suggestion presented in Waiting for Godot where human beings are always waiting for something grand to happen every day even though they know that no such thing will happen. So, what’s wrong in having to wait for elections, constitution, federalization, etc on a national level? My point is that it would help a lot if we plainly accepted that there will always be something that we have to wait for followed by some more things to wait for.

All political ideologies, whether communist or socialist or democratic, seek to instill a positive sense of hope in people by promising to make things better. Barack Obama, for instance, came in the US national politics scene with the promise of a new hope—that it is possible to hope and believe in change. The numerous political parties in Nepal too have floated their own ideologies that promise to achieve the dreams of a prosperous and stable Nepal. Every politician, holds on to the ideology of his/her concerned party, and goes through this ‘wait’ for the dream to be fulfilled.

Hope and wait go together most of the time in our personal lives as well as in the life of a nation. After many months of waiting hopelessly, just the formation of an instrument like the High Level Political Mechanism (HLPM) has restored a bit of hope in people that things may finally improve and that there will be some consensus for the promulgation of the new constitution.

Human civilizations over the ages have always aspired for further progression and sophistication, and politics is the key instrument to fulfill such aspirations. However, as such aspirations are unending and infinite, we tend to wait for something more to happen even when after things have already happened. Or, maybe on most occasions, we fail to realize that what we have been waiting for has already happened and needlessly continue to wait for it to happen. In this perpetual game of wait and hope, we in Nepal are now waiting for the now famous date of May 28 to arrive so that we can have a new constitution. It is almost definite that after we have the new constitution, we will ponder yet again and question ourselves: Was this what we were really waiting for?

Given that the constitution is just a document on paper officially announced to be what it is, there surely will be the ‘wait’ for the implementation of the constitution to institutionalize federal Nepal and democratic institutions. But let us not forget that the fundamental human condition is to keep on waiting like the two characters in Waiting for Godot. Since there is no escape from this condition, we are left with no option but to wait enthusiastically for the hope projected by May 28.

bishnu.sapkota@gmail.com