Shirish writes: " I see a danger of negativity brewing against "Palpasa Cafe", because of the award". This is NOT a danger. This is to be expected and accepted in creative fields that can only be judged by necessarily subjective criteria of BOTH the experts and the public. [With the possible exception of The New York Times' theater critic whose bad reviews can kill dramas playing in the highly competitive theater market in New York, almost all criticisms mean NOTHING to the sales and the public enjoyment of various artistic creations.] My limited experience is that literature, the arts and music are fields that grow because of all kinds of public criticisms -- fair and unfair. That said, I remain fascinated with the institution of Madan Puraskar Guthi itself. Its criteria appear to be vague. Its decisions are secretive. Its jurors are anonymous. We don't even know whether the jurors change from year to year. It does not even produce, with a set criteria, a short-list of candidates. It's marketed in such a way that the puraskar is often more famous than the winning authors or their books. [Does anyone remember who won it last year, and the year before that? Few do; and the award apppear to have no discernible effect on the sales of the awarded books.] And no writer in Nepal dares criticise it lest doing so diminished his/her chances of winning the award someday. [An analogy: No journalist in Nepal dares do an investigative piece on the casino industry lest the flow of advertisements stopped!] As a reader, I'd love to read an investigative account of how this institution really operates. Tetti ho. oohi ashu