Take 59: Last take of the year
No end-of-year listicle this time, la.
Hi, welcome to Cold Takes by Boju Bajai. In this newsletter, we bring a round-up of news and feminist views from Nepal and the Nepali internet.
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It’s almost the end of this year. So here we are, like everyone else, trying to make sense of 2023 which was marked by one crisis after another, both close to home and around the world. In the last 50-odd editions of Cold Takes, we mostly wrote about the bad and ugly we witnessed this year. So for a change, we’ve put together a roundup of some nice and wonderful things at Boju Bajai.
As we wrap up this year, we just wanted to let you know how grateful we are for your consistent support. Thank you for listening to Boju Bajai, reading this newsletter, and sending kind, encouraging messages that keep us going.
2023 has been rewarding as well as challenging for our small (but mighty) team at Boju Bajai.
This year, we covered a variety of topics in our podcast. Once again we collaborated with Manju Telor, a talented health journalist, but this time we turned our gaze to nurses amidst a year marked by repeated conflicts between medical professionals and patients and their loved ones over the quality and level of care in healthcare institutions.
We hosted a live event - आमाको मुख - which you can watch online on the idealization of the mother figure and what it might mean when we look at our socio-cultural and political condition, with writers Anbika Giri and Babita Rai. Of our usual podcast programming, with 24 episodes released this year, we dedicated 9 episodes to women we greatly admire from different fields and backgrounds from journalist Binu Subedi sharing her personal and professional journey as a reporter and a woman to writer Kunsang, a unique voice bringing us stories from Humla.
We are also extremely proud of our little endeavor called Boju Bajai Reads, where we have our favorite writers read their work. Care has been an integral theme and area of interest for us this year as demonstrated by the six-part series we produced for Urgent Action Fund Asia & Pacific called “Care at the Centre: Voices from the Majority World,” where we explored activists and human rights defenders visualize care and protection today at both the individual and organizational levels.
On a celebratory note, we won some award shaward this year - the South Asia Laadli Media Awards, 2023 for Consistent reporting on Gender issues for our two-part series about Abortion rights in Nepal, and we were also short-listed for the International Women Podcasting Award for the same series in their “Moment of Podcasting Panache in a Language Other Than English,” category. This series would not have been possible without journalist Srijana Khadka and researcher Shristi Shakya.
हाम्रो प्रिय मित्र निकिताले भनेजस्तै, here’s to winning more hearts and awards in 2024 and beyond while trying to build space for unapologetic and unfiltered feminist takes. So, thank you once again for spending time with Boju Bajai in 2023. We hope you can spend some much-needed time with your loved ones during these holidays.
Happy holidays and Happy New Year.
We will be back with our next edition in 2024.