Nobody will be happier than me to find Ashu a demcrat (I have invested just too much on him although he perceives them as attacks. Sorry for this pomposity of mine). So this is in no way to pull his leg when he has promoted himself to a democrat for the first time. All these years, Ashu consistently introduced himself as an "Ambivalent democrat". He was always skeptic about what he calls "textbook democracy" for Nepal. Then a few days ago, he wanted to be called a "Nuanced democrat". Now he goes one step up and declares himself as a plain "democrat". And he claims his democratic credibility should be at par with one of very old Sajhaites and a journalist Mr. Akhilesh Upadhyay. Good for Ashu. And good for democracy. However, there is a small problem. The rate of Ashu's democratic promotion is also directly proportional to the increase in the intensity of his nuanced support for the monarch. This part is puzzling. However, given the fact that King Gyanendra himself is claiming to be the most democrat of all and that what he is doing is actually for the sake of preserving (deep-freezing ?) democracy in Nepal, it is not unconceivable that Ashu might have got His Majesty's message. (Remember Ashu's recent claim that most Nepalis are getting His Majesty's message ?) I'll leave Ashu there. Now Akhilesh Upadhyay. When he was active in Sajha in a distant past, he impressed me as a man of democratic convictions and commitments. I don't know what has happened between then and now, but when I read his post Feb 1 article Ashu has cited above, I was taken aback. Here is what I wrote about that. From freenepal.org - http://www.freenepal.org:8080/FreeNepal/action/discussion.do;jsessionid=79E02DEBAC046E3AF126C30F75F416A3?currentContentId=11 MODEST PROPOSAL ? Modesty to the Palace, Lashing out to Fellow Journalists ! Posted On: 2005-04-09 17:30:19.003 By: Deepak Khadka The original title of Mr. Upadhyaya's article gave me the impression that perhaps the writer has a proposal to end the political conflict in Nepal. I was disappointed not only not to find such a proposal, but also to find that the 'modest' part of his "modest proposal" is directed to the palace and the 'proposal' part to his peers. His implication, disguised in a form of introspecting question, that the media has been helping the Maoists, which, by the way, glaringly echoes the King's government's point for controlling the media the way it is doing now, and his displeasure with his peers for "the fact that we [they] have consistently spewed anti-Palace vitriol" are perhaps his predilections that have left him with nothing to propose when he appears to be proposing to the palace with this concluding remark, "For now, the onus lies with the Palace." What onus ?