New eyes and ears

There is much to do before Nepali society appreciates the likes of Sapana Roka Magar without the instructive gaze of the international media.

Why hadn’t I heard of Sapana Roka Magar and her work before? This past week she is everywhere; there is hardly a media outlet that doesn’t have a report about or an interview of her. Once the BBC chose her as one of the 100 most influential women in the world for 2020, she suddenly became a darling of the Nepali media. Every news outlet has scrambled to have a piece of her—for the right reasons. Yet, again, why hadn’t the regular consumers of news in Nepal known about her story? And why hadn’t we heard of the man, Binaya Jung Basnet, whom she calls father, who heads an organisation that takes care of unclaimed bodies and performs their last rites at Kathmandu’s cremation ground on the Bagmati river.