For the past 22 years, Ganesh Ghimire has been part of the Balmiki Campus—first as a student, then a faculty member, and now as campus chief.

 

Every day, he enters the 68-year-old campus on Exhibition Road, opposite the Kathmandu Fun Park, and his heart breaks. Beyond the beautiful wood-carved doors, where over a thousand students study the Sanskrit language every day, the smell of urine and faeces engulfs the air. A dark corridor opens into a muddy, grassy field that houses three shabby campus buildings—one of which looks like it could crumble any minute. Inside its cracked walls are 50,000 books—forsaken and forgotten.

 

Ghimire, who has been campus chief for the past two years, says that his hands are tied and he can’t do much to help.

 

“We love this campus like our home, but things are tough for us. What can we do to make the campus better when we don’t have finances?” said Ghimire.

 

Established in 1951, the Balmiki Campus is a branch of Nepal Sanskrit University, which is headquartered in Dang. Since the earthquakes of 2015, the campus—sparing the classrooms—suffered massive damage, especially their library, which houses thousands of centuries-old rare manuscripts that are now lying unattended.

 

The campus administration managed to salvage the most important of the ancient handwritten manuscripts—pandulipis—wrapping them in cloth sheets. But the rest of the books, also important, suffer. The library, which is on the east side of the college premises, looks abandoned and decrepit, with unorganised bookshelves. Many of the books themselves have suffered rain damage while others have holes from silverfish. Most books are covered with a thick layer of dust, as if no one has flipped through them in decades.