Lockdown And Zeal Of TRN Reporters

Bishnu Gautam 

The road leading to the Ring Road from Budhanilkantha was deserted. Shops on either side of the road were shuttered. No one was even seen near the road. Mohammad, our driver, was driving at high speed along the wide empty road.

“Sir, does it not look like Pralaya (catastrophe)?” Ajita, our health reporter, who was sitting next to me, wearing a facemask and glove, all of a sudden disturbed the calmness by throwing the unexpected question at me. “No one knows what will happen next,” she worried.

Hers was not an unusual curiosity, because it was the first week of the lockdown ever imposed across Nepal on March 24, 2020, and no one knew what course the deadly pandemic would take.
On that sunny day, I was heading to the office after picking Ajita from her Budhanilkantha-based residence. I had reached Budhanilkantha from Pepsi-cola, looking at the city that was rendered lifeless.

Hard Routine
Of course, picking and dropping one or two reporters was an everyday routine then, because no one was allowed to come out of their houses and drive without having passes for the first few weeks of the first lockdown.
A gathering in a crowd was risky then, only one or two reporters used to come to the office to help me according to routine. Others were asked to work from home. A similar provision was introduced in the Features and News Desk sections of the English daily. That means only six to seven of us would be at the office a day. Others worked from home.

While all other dailies went online quitting print versions, two dailies—The Rising Nepal and the Gorkhapatra continued their print version even during the frightening period. TRN published its regular eight pages instead of the newly added 12 pages although the staffers in Photocompose exerted pressure to reduce the pages to four. But we did not agree to look at the zeal of our energetic reporters, who ultimately kept on working as usual even without taking weekly off!

Everybody was so scared that they used to feel comfortable staying home. However, the routine was in place, according to which one had to come to the office at least two days a week. Of them, me and office assistant Tanka Bahadur Dani were regular office-goers.

As every shop was shut, having snacks or tea was impossible then. However, Dani used to manage to find a few shops selling biscuits, Furandana or doughnuts. We used to enjoy them with black tea prepared by Dani at the office or with water. When there was no option, eating Furandana regularly for a week was painful. Fed up with the same snack, Purushottam Khatri (security reporter) one day dared to say that the Furandana pricked his mouth. But we had no option.

More interesting was to see everybody fearing another person approaching closer to them. “Dani Dai, do not come near to me, I do not drink your tea and water, I have my own,” the lady reporters used to say. “Those who do not drink tea prepared by me will one-day catch COVID-19,” the happy-looking office assistant used to retort. “Those who fear the coronavirus more will one day catch it,” he used to chuckle, looking at the scared lady reporters.

No matter whether the reporters came to the office, or worked from home, they all worked hard, translating or writing the required number of news stories and covering their regular beats. During both lockdowns, there was no dearth of local news at the TRN desk. The reporters worked seven days a week from home.
The zeal the young reporters and others in The Rising Nepal showed during the time of crisis was really encouraging. Ajita did not take weekly off from March 24 to throughout September 2020 while Pallav Bhusal prepared the World Page until January 2021 without having a break of a single day for nine months!

When the lockdown eased, allowing reporters to ride their bikes and cycles, the reporters started coming to the office on their own on their office-duty day. Moreover, when cases started growing gradually, many of them preferred to have their bikes or even cars because they knew the office vehicles were used by many staffers. Young hands like Ashish Mishra, who used to peddle his bicycle to New Road from Patan, Samapda Khatiwada, who used to come to the office on her scooter from Gongabu and Renu Dhakal on a scooter from Koteshwor never said ‘No’ when they were asked to translate or write a news story even at the odd hour. Renu managed to prepare the Entertainment Page with at least one local story even though the entertainment industry around the world came to a complete halt since the beginning of 2020.
However, news reports about corruption in the purchase of health materials, dearth of testing kits and manpower in the country, and violation of lockdown by the men close to those in power used to come as shocking for the reporters, working risking their life.

Journalists infected
The situation became even more worrying after the first COVID-19 death was reported in Nepal on May 14, 2020. Still, everything went as usual at The Rising Nepal.
But in mid-September 2020, COVID-19 finally entered the TRN, infecting Sampada, the youngest reporter. Fortunately, she did not pass the virus to others in the office, although six of us who worked with her on the day she tested positive for the virus underwent a sort of ordeal for five days until we tested negative. Later on, two other reporters caught the virus in the first wave of Coronavirus.
Although fear has diminished in the second wave of coronavirus, it infected more in TRN. Interestingly, the first wave had entered the Gorkhapatra from the junior reporter of TRN, the second wave from the senior-most—the executive chairman and more staffers were affected. One of the TRN colleagues spent 27 days in the hospital.

However, as most of us had received the vaccines against COVID-19 by the time the second wave hit the country, the fear of the virus had decreased, and it had been easier to attend office. Now that everything has returned to normalcy at the office, Pallav, the most careful man at the TRN desk, was tested positive. When we are preparing to mark the 56th TRN Day, he is taking a rest at home. Looking at the precautions taken by Pallav, we, at TRN, used to think that he could put the COVID-19 at bay even in a difficult situation. But our supposition deceived, and Dani became true—those who fear more will one day catch the virus!

(Deputy Executive Editor Gautam is chief reporter of this daily)