If enough people get mowed down in the streets in Kathmandu, the news gets into our papers -- but how many people is enough? More than 1,000 peopled died in the floods of a few years ago, yet there was very little coverage of this in our news media, and there was almost nothing about the strikes and demonstrations that were crippling Kathmandu just before the floods. We don't even expect to hear about such things as plane crashes in Lukla or the Kali Gandaki, or any of the more local news.
At the time of the floods in 1993, friends in Kathmandu were kind enough to fax me a couple of articles out of the local papers. That gave me the idea of subscribing to one or more Kathmandu-based English language papers. Now I am receiving the Kathmandu Post, The Independent and the Rising Nepal.
But how do I share the news with my friends? Passing along the newspapers themselves is not practical when there are a number of people who might be interested and they do not all live in the same area. What I can do is copy out some of the more interesting articles, summarize other articles, and send this all out as a kind of news sheet to those who want it. That explains News from Nepal, which I now send out to subscribers at irregular intervals.
Many of the people to whom I send this -- in fact, most of them -- are Nepalese and are just as interested in hearing about each other as in what is going on in Nepal. So NEPAL NEWS will also be concerned with your news: who and where you are and what you are doing. And it can be a kind of clearing house for miscellaneous information such as current exchange rates, changes in immigration law or visa requirements, etc.
It will cost me something in time as well as postage and maybe telephone calls to type this up and mail it out, which means that it will also cost you something if you want to receive it. I will try to keep it cheap; if you pay me $15 a year, I promise you at least six issues. After that, the price may go up -- but not for charter subscribers.
So please let me know (with a $15 check) if you want to receive more issues. Please also give me any news from or about Nepal you would like to share, as well as news of yourself. And while you are about it, you might give me names and addresses of other people who might want to receive this news sheet. And if you have anything to advertise, we can do that at a modest price.
It is now possible to get some late news and comment from Nepal through Internet. Yet for those who do not have access to Internet or who may prefer reading from paper to reading from a screen, News from Nepal, which attempts to present a broader view than a daily or weekly newspaper, still serves a purpose.