Flowers worth 200 million rupees Shivaratri is one of the holy festivals of the Hindus. This year on Shivaratri Day, about one million devotees visited the Pashupatinath Temple. This year, organizers had given special attention on decoration of the Pashupatinath Temple. Flowers worth 200 million rupees were imported from India just to decorate the temple premises. In the past years, the festival was being observed without flower decoration of the Temple. Why the organizers wished to spend such a huge amount of money just for decoration of the Temple, it is surprising. The Pashupati Area Development Trust could control unnecessary expenditure and could run one standard educational institution and one well equipped hospital for commoners from the Trust’s fund. Will the Trust think about such things? Commoners’ mentality! Sure, the flower decoration at the Pashupatinath Temple premises attracted Kathmanduites. The next day also, hundreds of thousands of people rushed to the Pashupatinath Temple to see the flower decoration. Unfortunately, the decoration was overnight destroyed by the locals as they picked away flowers used for decoration without any hesitation! Commoners performed monkey like behavior! When Chinese President Xi came to Kathmandu, the government developed the Tinkune traffic island into an attractive garden. The next day of the departure of President Xi, most of the plants disappeared as locals took them away. Later, the government had to deploy Armed Police to stop stealing of the plants! Sometimes, this Babbler thinks, how can Nepal get leaders with clean image when we have the voters having such a mentality! When will we get Kalapani back? The leaders in the ruling party are found repeatedly saying that Nepal will not hand over a single inch of land to any foreign country! At any cost, Kalapani territory will be returned, they say. The government, to counter India, is not able to even publish a map by including Nepali territory Lippulekh, Limpiuadhara and Kalapani, which the Indians have already included in their political map. Our Prime Minister is saying that he is committed to return the Nepali territory, thus, publication of a map is not a big job! It seems, our PM is saying all these just for public consumption as there is no any effective action made by the government to return Nepali territory! Meanwhile, the EPG Report is kept pending as the Indian PM has denied to receive that. Our government seems helpless in this task also! Significance of Sagarmatha Dialogue! The government is preparing to host the Sagarmatha Dialogue with big fanfare. The government has extended invitation to heads of the nation and governments, academicians and experts from around 40 countries to attend the Dialogue on environmental protection. We, the Kathmanduites, are worried as we will be locked-up at home during the event taking place in Kathmandu! We are witnessing deforestation in rampant manner by those smugglers. We have seen rampant exploitation of river-based natural resources under the protection of the political leaders. We have not been able to manage properly our natural resources, in the meantime, our government is going to hold an environment based dialogue, which is much more astonishing! Celebrating birthday Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli celebrated his 69th birthday with big fanfare at his birthplace in Terathum. On the occasion, he distributed clothes, educational materials to elderly citizens and students, which is good. However, it sounds bit surprising that as a communist leader he is celebrating his birthday against the party code of conduct by throwing party to two thousand people! Cutting 15 kgs worth cake with the Nepal’s map, flying to the birthplace by using the Nepal Army helicopters that too perhaps from the government coffer is an odd!