GANESH THE CONSEQUENCES only know about it they can crush it. Yet the trade flourished. So, a thriving heroin trade and no arrests. Hmmm. It didn’t take long for Padam to document what many suspected. The royal family was smug- gling drugs. Worse, was that they were paying for them with smuggled objects of priceless devotional art being smuggled out. Nepal’s royalty was killing it’s populace insidously and destroying it’s spiritual legacy. Understandably, many others had put the facts together. Equally understandable was the fact that few if any Nepalis had bothered to speak the accusations aloud or commit them to print. The truth was too painful. Except one man with the spirit of Ganesh was willing to make sure the story got printed for the same reasons that others wouldn’t. Despite whatever dire consequences might ensue. I do not know if I can adequately convey the depth of the consequences. I will however describe what happened one night after Bimarsha fingered the brothers of the king for their crimes. He had been participating in a journalism conference that lasted all day. I have been to countless such conferences but I have never had the night Padam had afterwards. He came home and took his family to a friend’s house; honoring a dinner invitation. They returned home and went to bed. Padam’s wife awoke first. It was the gunshot that woke her. She threw on the light and almost col- lapsed. Her husband’s right eye was no longer in his face. The mattress was saturated with his blood. It came from the gunshot wound to the head that he had just taken. In Nepal any man who takes a gunshot to the face at point blank range while he sleeps is reasonably expected to die. There simply aren’t adequate medical facilities to do the type of emer- gency surgery required. But in Bangok there are. But unless you are exceptionally well connected and have some divine and earthly guardians watching over you, the simple truth is you won’t get to Bangkok in time. Padam needed miracles. And they happened. Padam Thakurathi was a previous member of the National Assembly, the closest thing pseudo democratic Nepal has to politicians. Miracle number one. The friends he had succeeded in getting him to Bangok for surgery. Miracle number two. WOKE Hick. WAS OF Wil Fae. NO He survived the surgery. Big miracle and miracle number three. The doctor who did the surgery was even amazed. He awoke 35 days later in Samiti Vej Hospital. Yet another miracle. He retained all his incisive mental func- tions. Anyone who doubt such miracles happen can check the records of Samiti Vej Hospital. Or they can look up Padam in Nepal, like Greenwald did. All further doubts should be quelled by a look at the man. Close to 30% of his frontal lobe on the right side of his face is missing. A crater. And yet if you talk to Padam, like Greenwald did, it should be clear he is still a exemplar of critical thought and dedica- tion to his craft. He is Ganesh in human form. The pen broke and so despite the personal “ disfigurement” he carried on and got the truth to print. And truth is not always easy to meet eye to missing eye. It is not always pretty. But to journalists like Padam Thakurathi it HOW MVCH IS 4 NEWSVAPICK WOKThi? MOKE Tha MONEY. IT'S WORKTH TAKING 4 DNLLET FOK. is always worth losing a tusk. Padam Thakurathi almost paid for his dedication with his life. He should have died. But it was more important that he lived, so he did. After such examples as Padam and Ganesh, while in Nepal, I returned to Canada. Now that I’ve returned, I hear grumbling, yet again, from the UBC Alma Mater Society about shutting down the Ubyssey. I’ve heard that The Ubyssey is too critical of the student government. I thought of Padam’s first paper. I wondered if the Ubyssey would survive. Then I thought of Bimarsha. Bimarsha survived an assasin’s bullet. Padam, like Ganesh, just snapped off a tusk and kept writing. No matter how much it seems that purveyors of truth can be killed, the truth can’t. When it comes time for the AMS to fork out for The Ubyssey and ask themselves if they really should have to pay that much for a newspa- per I ask they consider a shot in the dark that Kathmandu @ NEPAL couldn’t kill the truth. . Consider how much one man was willing to pay to keep a newspaper alive. A newspaper is worth more than money. It’s worth taking a bullet for. All papers should aspire to that standard. If you shut them down they never be as good as a small weekly paper called Bimarsha in a small landlocked kingdom called Nepal. They’ ll never get the chance.