Of boring speeches

Summer heat had overtaken the cool spring breeze. It was unbearably hot as we waited for the chief guest to arrive. It was the foundation day of our school.
A big red car arrived. It would have to be the chief guest. Cars were rare those days in that part of the country.
"At last!" we cried in our hearts.
"Lam Neten", the boy next to me whispered.
"Is Neten his name?"
"No, it is his position or the title", he told me.
At that time, it seemed strange to me that "Neten" should be a title for a Lam.
Anyway, he looked impressive. Tall and a little bald, shaven head and moon-faced, he cut a perfect figure for a Lama in his immaculate tetsi-shamtha (monk dress).
For us, nothing mattered. We just hoped that his speech would be short.
Slowly and dignified, he rose. Carefully, he took out his paper; then cleared his throat. Then he looked at us for what seemed to be ages.
A girl fainted due to heat and was taken away.
Then he began.
"Zam med sa Zam chab, chhu med sa chhu thhen,.....lhayul sakha babbab zum....." He went on just as others chief guests used to say.
"Where others took hundreds of years, our country has achieved within a few decades." He continued.
Then came a flurry of excessive praise, quotations and proverbs which overshadowed the actual meaning of what he wanted to convey.
"We are a unique country blessed by the 'konchhosum' with a lot of natural resources. Other countries envy us..." for another few minutes.
We love our country and our beloved king, but excessive and lengthy praises simply borders more on flattery than on show of sincere appreciation.
By the time he finished, few more students had fainted. The rest of us were also totally sun burnt and exhausted.
It was a long speech. But it was the same old wine. He was eloquent, but failed to make any point. But what he did not fail at was to grace the house of his much loved adopted sister, a village beauty, who lived in a village next to our school.
Later, that unmarried girl gave birth to a child. It was a well-known little secret that the baby was Lam Neten’s and that he had owned up to it privately.
His little fling was only human. Let us forget it. But what bores me is that speeches of our bureaucrats and elected leaders have't changed a bit from that of the Lam Neten's. Lost in the verbosity of cliches such as Gross National Happiness (GNH), excessive praises, similes and proverbs, they fail to make any real point.
The old wine of baseless rhetoric has long lost its appeal. We would like to hear about the solutions to real issues such as the widening rich-poor gap, corruption, increasing crime and unemployment. It is time for a new wine of rhetoric.