K2. It started big. It began with a dream. We called it City Bytes then, when it first saw the light of day. Our favoured child of destiny grew with time. It was indeed gratifying to witness this our labour of love mature with dynamism and certain regality. It held on to its beliefs and marched on. It kept pace with the wind of change, but remained true to its creed and ethos all along. It got its face; it had its own voice – in time. It had its own pride of place in the larger scheme of our societal functions.

And now, today, it is here again. How it is here come this day, though, has some touch of melancholy to it. As it rises with confidence from behind the tall, dark mountains, the sun must go down as the hour calls for it to hide behind cold silence. This is the story of a little magazine we brought to you every weekend.

Kuensel was considered a serious paper. It still is. We thought then that we were not offering our readers what by right we had to give. The newspaper did not have space for lighter human-interest stories. That is how K2 was born.

K2 covered many, some memorable, stories on subjects that affect us from unemployment to economy to education to fashion to agriculture. Among the best stories that K2 ran was on July 4, 2009 edition titled Children of A Lesser God that followed the lived and hardship of children who collect garbage. The story focused on the dump yards where they play and grow up. It tried to bring to the notice of our policymakers and planners the other side of development. ‘Gangs’ of ‘Shangri-La’ brought the story of changing youth culture influenced by exposure to explosive media contents and sad economic realities. Into The Wild told the story of how highlanders in Lunana live in constant fear of flood from the glacial lakes. It brought from the far-off society a story of how climate change is threatening the very survival of the village and how the people are coping with it. The colourful narrative, written in the fashion of a travelogue, will be remembered for the issues it brought to the fore just as much for the freshness of language the writer employed to tell the tale. As self-explanatory as the title of the article was, A Growing Generation Gap, told a story of how filial relationships are falling into disuse in the hectic urban landscape.

There are more K2 stories that highlighted the challenges of modern Bhutan for which the readers will always remember the magazine.

Elections are nearing and the news team will now not publish the magazine, at least not until the elections are over. But K2 will live on the hearts and minds of our readers.