Nepal, Dec. 22 -- When a situation is too complex to comprehend, the temptation to insert the first-person singular in the narrative is impossible to resist. A day before the winter solstice, I was re-reading The Works of Oscar Wilde in the afternoon sun. Once again I had found The Ballad of Reading Gaol particularly striking.

In the closing section of the six-part poem, Wilde bemoans: 'Yet each man kills the thing he loves, / By each let this be heard, / Some do it with a bitter look, / Some with a flattering word, / The coward does it with a kiss, / The brave man with a sword!' I was trying to contemplate the way Supremo KP Oli will kill the contested constitution which he had used so far with so much loving care. Then the postprandial...