With their leaders in detention and their rights removed, Nepal's political parties have been left powerless after the king seized control of the country, while the long-suffering people of Kathmandu go about their business with apparent indifference. The state of emergency declared on Tuesday when King Gyanendra seized power, the suspension of basic rights, notably that of assembly, and the isolation imposed on the Himalayan country; none of this is immediately apparent in the capital. Soldiers patrol the streets, telephone lines have been cut, political activists are in detention or under house arrest. But the rhythm of life in the city does not seem to have been disrupted. Shops are open and schools are in class. Taxi drivers are stuck in traffic jams, women shop in markets and tourists browse the boutiques. Since the king's dramatic sacking of the government for failing to hold elections or end an increasingly deadly Maoist revolt, there has not been one protest march or riot. At the "democracy wall", the usual site of demonstrations in Kathmandu, all is calm. The main parties in the sacked government -- the Nepali Congress Democratic Party and its main ally the Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist -- say they have not been able to organise a response because their hands have been tied by the king's decrees. "Because there is a gap of communication, no (telephone) landline, no mobile line, nothing has been organised yet," said a member of ousted Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's Nepali Congress Democratic Party. About 100 political activists were arrested while their leaders were put under house arrest, which bars them from any outside contact, he said. "We are waiting the orders of the senior leaders but they are under house arrest," he said. Political parties are further stymied by the ban on public assembly. "Even four or five cannot gather because it has been banned," said Batshraj Pokharel, a member of the communist party. At the heavily guarded university campuses, normally a hotbed of agitation and protest, there is simply confusion. In the absence of orders from above the usually militant student unions are floundering. At the Padmakanya campus an activist of the Free Student's Union -- close to the ousted prime minister Deuba -- acknowledges, "We are all confused about what to do." At the Shankardeb campus, students have symbolically stopped the holding of exams while waiting to be called to action. However, the mobilisation of a response seems only to concern activists. It is not a concern for the man on the street occupied by daily life in the destitute country that has been gripped by a brutal Maoist insurrection since 1996.