With Nepalis living under a state of emergency, civil rights suspended and dissent against the king banned after he seized power, they are reading bizarre things in their newspapers.

Nepali journalists, especially those who have been through similar crackdowns before, are finding imaginative if sometimes head-scratching ways of commenting about the crisis gripping the impoverished kingdom.

Editorials and commentaries deal with the behaviour of rats, the importance of trees, the need to appreciate the weather and the role of socks in society. To many readers, they are coded comments on the political situation. For others, the overly mundane subjects emphasise what newspapers cannot publish.

?Till last week, Nepal?s press was really one of the free-est in the world,? said Kunda Dixit, analyst and editor of The Nepali Times weekly. ?What a difference a week makes.?

Soldiers have been stationed in newsrooms and in some cases are vetting every word before it goes out, say other reporters.

?They are making us change words ? they are telling us to change the word from Maoist to terrorist,? said one reporter from a Nepali language daily, referring to reports about Maoist guerrillas fighting to topple the monarchy.

Troops and armoured cars are outside some media offices. The president and general-secretary of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists have been arrested, members say. On Saturday, a planned meeting of senior editors, federation members and other journalists to discuss the situation was abandoned when a blue police van parked outside the offices. Some journalists are on the run.

The same day, when the road map of Gyanendra and his 10-man loyalist cabinet was announced in the media, The Kathmandu Post?s editorial was entitled ?Socks in Society?. It ends, obscurely: ?Branded or unbranded, dear readers let us all make a resolution to wear clean socks this summer.?