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By Devendra Gautam

Prometheus (Forethought), the supreme trickster and the master craftsman associated with the creation of fire and mortals, the Titan with a very soft corner for humankind. A beloved character of the Greek poet, Hesiod.  

Zeus, the chief god, is hiding the fire from mortals in his paradise. Reason: All he is getting from the sacrifice that humans make is bones and fat, thanks to the trickery of Prometheus. Imagine the sufferings of the mortal without the fire, in those frigid climes!

The intelligent and empathetic Titan steals the fire and returns it to Earth.  

Apparently, Zeus has old scores to settle, with Prometheus and humankind, for the theft of fire and for the gift of bones and fat for far too long. So, he creates Pandora and dispatches her to marry Epimetheus (Hindsight). Ignoring Prometheus’ warnings, Epimetheus marries Pandora. One day, as the bride opens the jar, evils, hard work and diseases fly out to torment humanity. 

That’s not the end of punishment for Prometheus, though. The evil Zeus has him nailed to a cliff in Caucasus and an eagle assigned to eat his lever, which keeps regenerating. 


Ancient times in what is now Siddhapokhari, Bhaktapur. A resident monster has been terrorizing communities living around it for long, effectively keeping them off the sacred pond associated with their cultures and rites. One day, a Tantrik feels enough is enough and decides to face the evil, at his own peril. Before entering the pond, he briefs a group of rite performers thus: For dealing with the devil, I will take the form of another devil. Once I have finished him off, I will show up in the pond, in the form of another evil (I will be wearing an amulet that will distinguish me from him. At that time, all you have to do is keep calm and composed (instead of running away upon my seeing dreaded form) and sprinkle these Akshyata (sacred, unsplit rice grains) on me so that I can return to this form. 

The waters of Siddhapokhari churn as a ferocious fight ensues underwater, ending in the death of the resident evil and giving the pond a red hue. The Tantrik shows up (obviously in the guise of another evil, with that amulet) requesting the ritualists to shower him with Akshyata. Terror-stricken, the ritualists flee the scene for their dear lives.

Back to the Grecian times. We too have had our Prometheuses like Lakhan Thapa, who tried to lead the Nepali society toward light during the dark regime of Jung Bahadur Rana, followed by Dashrath Chand, Gangalal, Dharmabhakt Mathema, Shukraraj Shastri and the like. They all paid for their attempts to push the society, consigned to darkness for ages, towards light, towards better days. 

The contemporary history of Nepal is a testament to the fact that leaders, who took on the onerous task of finishing off resident evils sapping the country off her lifeblood, have emerged as dreaded evils themselves, with democratic ‘rituals’ like periodic elections further empowering the demons in them instead of taming them—in rigged polities marked by chronic corruption, nepotism, political instability, kleptocracy and plutocracy.  

Against this backdrop, time has indeed come for the Nepali people to free themselves of visible and invisible shackles that bind them in a long and dark cave of their own construct. 

As Albert Einstein says: We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Have we ever bothered to keep nuggets of wisdom like this in mind while selecting/electing our political leadership?  

Make no mistake, it is not the curse of some virtuous woman that has put us in an unenviable situation for long but our very own inaction, our choices and our collective tendency of waiting for a proverbial hero to come and fix things for us overnight. 

Remember, a new dawn will not come of itself from an era of mottled dawns; we all will have to strive for it.