Shalini Malla

Shalini Malla is the 40-year-old protagonist of the story "Fast Forward." She runs an investigative journalism magazine for which the story is named. Shalini is a confident and idealistic woman, qualities that the author implies were developed while attending college in the United States. She has used Fast Forward as an instrument to combat corruption in the Nepali government and corporate affairs for five years, and she is well-known in the country. When the story begins, she is confidently asserting the necessity of a free press to a government minister in response to his demands that she issue a retraction on a story that appeared in Fast Forward. Shalini refuses to do so because of her journalistic principles, and the result is catastrophic. The reporter who wrote the story disappears, and when Shalini returns to the government minister to demand answers, she is assaulted by police officers...