The Balen-Ben Duo

¡Hola!

Being here in Colombia this week has been like a pilgrimage. I read Love in the Time of Cholera in English soon after it came out in 1985, and I still treasure its frayed and dog-eared copy back home.

The magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s other novels like The General in His Labyrinth and One Hundred Years of Solitude, must have left its mark, because I just realised how many Nepali Times articles have modified those titles into headlines over the last decades.

Like this, this, and the most popular one here. The paper even carried a Marquez obituary when he died in 2014.

As Nepal’s war dragged on, Karin Eichelkraut, a Colombian living in Nepal at the time, compared the lost opportunities for peace with FARC and Nepal’s own attempts to forge a ceasefire with Maoist insurgents.

Another Colombian writer, Juanita Malagon, was actually based at the Nepali Times newsroom in 2012 as an Online Coordinator, and among the pieces she wrote was this one comparing the peace processes in her country and Nepal.

And when Caterina Heyck, a jurist in Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, visited Nepal in 2023, our columnist Marty Logan talked to her about Nepal’s own stalled transitional justice process.

And the paper may’ve had a hand in bringing together Nepali environmental researcher Bibek Raj Shrestha and Colombian anthropologist Lorena Gómez Ramírez after they contributed their travelogue The Andes and Himalaya Join Hands in 2021 about the Tamang Heritage Trail trek.

This year, Colombia is at a major political crossroads as Abelardo de la Espriella, the far-right politician who defeated President Gustavo Petro by less than a 1% margin in the election in May, takes office next month. Espriella was endorsed by Donald Trump, and has vowed to roll back Colombia’s influential role in global negotiations for climate action.

These worries loom large this weekend at the Gabo Festival 2026 in Bogota, the annual Ibero-America gathering organised by the foundation that Gabriel Garcia Marquez established to protect democracy and the free press.

Back home in Nepal, the Nepali Times team did a splendid job this week reporting on the outsized role that Prime Minister Balendra Shah’s inner circle of buddies has in decision-making. Special Correspondent Shristi Karki reports on what the Kitchen Cabinet has been up to, and concludes that it hints at deeper issues between PM Shah and RSP chair Rabi Lamichhane.

The page 1 piece (BROCRACY), accompanied by Anup Tamu’s brilliant cartoon, got unprecedented engagement online that proved just how polarised Nepali society has become between those who cannot tolerate fault-finding of the government, and those who cannot but find fault.

In her Editorial (Great Expectations, page 2), Sonia Awale concludes that it may be unrealistic to expect the new government to solve in four months what took more than two decades to wreck. But having two rival centres of power within the ruling party may not be the answer either.

All this is happening as mystery surrounds the rumoured visit by Balendra Shah’s most trusted bro, Kumar Byanjankar (Ben), to New Delhi to meet spooks even as the Jantar Mantar GenZ protests flared.

Whether he did or not, the real question is who leaked that story to Nepalkhabar, and why now? The plot may thicken even more as the Balen-Ben duo run the country their own way.

Elsewhere in this issue, Dan Edwards contributes the latest in his series on the history of transportation in Nepal, this time drawing a timeline of aviation between the first overflight of Mt Everest in 1933 by two British pilots right up to the dawn of the jet age with Royal Nepal Airlines inducting a Boeing 727 in 1972. (The Early Years of Flying in Nepal, page 6-7).

Interestingly, Rana era archivist Santosh Khaderi points out that 92 years ago, many in Nepal believed that the devastating 1934 earthquake was a result of the gods of the Himalaya being angered by the Everest overflight.

This is also an artful issue with reviews on pages 10-11 of an ongoing exhibition of paubha scrolls, turning the traditional Newa body painting tradition into art, and the mehendi fashion trend. And on page 12 is a profile of Russian artist Liudmila Rozvodovskaya and her recent exhibition of installations exploring the theme of leaving home.

Finally, while writing this week’s newsletter from Bogota, I realised just what a valuable asset the Nepali Times archive. It reminded me of long-forgotten content, and let me find long-lost friends.

All right, amigos, that is it for now from your correspondent. Meet you again next week on this page.

Kunda Dixit