Getting A Life At Sajha
Paramendra Bhagat
September 7, 2002.

It all started for me on August 2, 2002, my last day in Washington DC after two months there: I was to head back to the Mid-West that evening. I had been caught in a heated debate on the SEBS discussion forum around an article by Nuru Lama on the �Bahun� issue in Nepal. Someone of the username �Paschim and Sajha fan� posted an article by �Paschim� � whoever that is, I thought upon first spotting the adopted name � along that SEBS thread, and it clicked: I had received an e-mail from the am-I-in-Kathmandu-am-I-in-Boston Ashutosh Tiwari months back, inviting me to �Sajha, as in sabai Nepali ko sajha.� I had come to the site, taken a glance about three seconds long, gone away, and forgotten.

I bet some Sajhawasis today wish that had been the end of the story, those who are tired of my relentless Sadbhavana arguments, my photo, my hyperlinks, my frequency, my Gaijatra tidbits, my haikus, my username, among other things.

But then I came, and I stayed on. Second time was the charm. I was instant messaging with Lara in Brisbane, Australia, the other morning � oh, those time zones � and I said I had littered Sajha more in a month than its most active users had in two years, perhaps.

Sajha is my favorite online community for now. For the longest time I stuck with Epinions.com, which I still think is the best online community there is on the continental/global level, but I have failed to get SEBSers and Sajhawasis to go there and sign up in hordes. For some reason. And I have been active at the SEBS site in the past. Society of Ex-Budhanilkantha Students.

It is just that I am the real name man. I don�t get it: why use cryptic usernames. Why hide one�s identity? Imagine a Nepali convention � by the way, I was there for the one in DC this summer � where participants come in thousands, each with their own attractive masks on, and a �username� plastered on their chests. �Hi Bitchpatroll23, nice to see your mask. Where did you get it?� Unlike the once a year offline conventions, Sajha is the 24-7 convention. Face time will always matter, but it is nice to be able to connect at whim, anytime, from anywhere, even from the jungles of south China.

Not enough traffic: that has been my primary problem. 700 visitors per day is great � my first day here my personal website at Geocities went down because I had posted these links to my articles and they must have gotten quite a few hits � but hardly enough. It ought to be more like 7,000 per day. I did my part. Every Nepali whose e-mail address I have saved in my Yahoo address book received an e-mail from me: Come to Sajha, and forward this e-mail to at least five people you know, or the planets will go in disarray. I could not think of something more forceful than planets the moment of inspiration.

For now I am counting on a column that actually has space at the bottom for readers to leave comments. A photo would be nice. And my full name hyperlinked to my webpage of links to my articles online. And that it gets archived after it has served its time on the front page.