Durganath Sharma, 72

The careers of many journalists of Durganath Sharma's generation spanned the technology transition. We started out as reporters in the age of cold type and letter press, graduated to Linotype, then in the 1980s came photocomposition and offset printing, after that we got rid of film and went straight from computer to plate, and now there are digital presses. 

Us reporters filed our stories by postal mail, dictated them on landline phones, telex machines, fax, dialup, and finally email and internet apps. We saw our stories being laid out with photographs in zinc blocks. 

Durganath Sharma, who died at age 72 on Wednesday in Kathmandu, was a celebrated and celebrity television journalist. But he started out in Gorkhapatra in the age of the letter press. He went on to the broadcast studio and his “Yo Radio Nepal ho. Aba Durganath Sharma bata samachar sunnuhos” was the most recognised voice across Nepal as he read the morning news on the short and medium wave bands.

Later, when Nepal Television started relatively late in the 1984, he was the chief news anchor and set the standard for camera presence and audience connection. The joke then was that he should say “Aba Durganath Sharma bata samachar hernuhos”. 

Durganath Sharma travelled across Nepal, often accompanying King Birendra on his annual inspections of development in remote areas. Because of his frequent reportage from the field, close friends had given him a moniker ‘Durgam Kshetra’ (Remote Area) by playing on his name. 

But even in radio, Sharma presided over a rapidly changing technology from analog shortwave, to AM (amplitude modulation) and witnessed the spread of FM (frequency modulation) and finally satellite radio and digital broadcasting. He worked through the evolution of television technology from the age of video parlours to terrestrial broadcasting, and on to cable to direct to home dish. From cameras that were so large and heavy they had to rest on burly shoulders to the Sony Handycam and finally mobile phones that could take videos.  

Durganath Sharma was the screen persona telling Nepal what was happening around the world. This was the age of Panchayat, so domestic news had to be taken with a pinch of salt. The democrat in Durganath Sharma valued the freedom of press, but it was just a job. He later used his reach on Nepal Television to start Biswa Ghatana (World Events) program that catapulted him to stardom.

In the age before Twitter provided instantaneous notifications about what is going on, Biswa Ghatana became a window on the world for a whole generation of Nepalis. As anchor, he did not just list the news line-up but also explain the background and context that drove events like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Chernobyl, Security Council debates and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In later years he taught media studies and penned several handbooks for journalists. He had a bypass surgery 15 years ago, but continued to teach and write columns in Kathmandu newspapers. He died of cardiac complications on Tuesday, and with him we lose a media practitioner with institutional memory of Nepal’s political transitions and the evolution of information technology over the past decades.