Photo Courtesy:  Ashmita Kunwar

On March 19, 2016, the Prince of Wales, Prince Harry visited Nepal. The tour, which started as a four-day trip in the capital of Kathmandu, was later extended by six days to help rebuild a school, in an undisclosed part of the country which was affected by last year’s devastating earthquake. He chose to stay in a local household during his visit and generally kept a low profile. He visited different cultural heritage sites, children’s hospital, delivered speeches for women empowerment amongst many other things. However, the main objective of his visit was to honor Gurkha soldiers killed in service to the Crown and to enjoy the natural beauty of the country.

The nation had been buzzing ever since his visit had been confirmed. The victims of the earthquake however, were not happy just because The Prince of Wales was visiting. The general thinking was that, “Hopefully when a big prince comes to visit these alleys, the world media will see how miserable our lives are and we will get some proper help".

Puspa Raj Bajracharya, care taker of the Golden Temple, said that they had sent requests and proposals to the government, quoting it was getting dangerous for the devotees who came to the temple because of the damage caused by the quake. All their requests have so far fallen on deaf ears. “Repairs are estimated to cost about 25 million rupees but so far only a fraction of that has been collected from private donors.” He added.

In such time of need, the victims are more hopeful of a foreigner rather than the leaders of their own country. What does this signify? It simply highlights how ignorant the nation has been towards those in need. The Prince devoted his precious time to share his sentiment and extended his compassion with the Gurkhas that he worked with in Afghanistan. Just the fact that the country cannot share its sentiment to its own people, to its own culture is enough to highlight how far behind we are as a nation. People don’t have to say our country is stuck in a marsh because of corrupt politicians, the situation itself is enough to show it.

So what should be done? To be honest, even I don’t know. Many say, “We should start making changes from the lowest level and work our way up.”, others say, “We should raise our voices.” and so on. I don’t know if we could hack into their bank accounts and blackmail them, that would just be great.

AND THE BIG QUESTION IS WHO WILL COME NEXT?