Nepal, Aug. 23 -- In 1859, while Jung Bahadur Rana was busy counting the loot his soldiers had usurped from Lucknow after helping the British crush the Sepoy Mutiny, Charles Dickens had published a novel about a revolution that devoured everything around it, including itself. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," it began, describing an aristocracy so deaf to hunger that a nobleman could run over a child with his carriage and pay him a coin. Paris burned for this. A year since Kathmandu was aflame, that line describes us better than anything written since.

One clear anxiety-pumping point is: is our version of urban spring at risk of devouring itself? We are free, wow, hurray, but now we have to make choices, and difficul...