From HIMAL, Volume 8, Issue 3 (MAY/JUN 1995)
This issue of Himal has a more than our usual variety of articles, traversing as we do the Far Eastern Himalaya to Jumla, the Nepal tarai, and Chang Thang. The subjects covered range from the unraveling sociopolitical base of the Indian Northeast, to feudal roadblocks in the path of progress, the violation of a prehistoric site, and the origin of a species.
Delhi-based writerSanjoy Hazarika presents the cover feature, on a region that is fast overtaking the rest of South Asia as a place where violence is a part of daily life. Unfortunately, more rather than less savagery seems to be written into the region’s future.
Dor Bahadur Bista, the guru of Nepali Anthropology, has spent the last three years trying to put his theories of fatalism and development to test in Jumla. Trust the professor to speak it like it is. Whenever Jangali John (alias John Vincent Bellezza) turns up in Kathmandu on his way from Himachal to Tibet or Tibet to Himachal, we get an article. His investigation of the conversion of an aboriginal site into a modern Buddhistic one is the kind of writing that Himal’s hopes to present more of. From the high plateau to the tarai: with origins in Los Angeles as an architect who used to design great office towers, Kurt W. Meyer has evolved into a researcher of Tharu life, spending much of his time jostling through tarai backroads in his red Maruti jeep.
If you have noticed some changes for the better in Himal’s layout and design, including a slight but significant change in the font used on the Himal logo and the addition of the band on which it sits, the man to credit is Amsterdam-based designer Frans Meijer. Over the course of the last two issues, Meijer provided us with just the amount of new design elements that he felt a short-staffed Himal could handle. We also thank Cas de Stoppelaar and the Netherland-Nepal Friendship Association for making Meijer available to us.
Readers should perhaps be told that in mid-April, Himal’s Associate Editor Manisha Aryal got married to Himal’s Board Member Bikas Pandey. Their individual links to Himal, we are told, was coincidental.