Goody!! a response from MR. Karthak himself :) So I could not help responding. Mind you, this is a conversation not a debate (which is the last thing that I would want to do. After all, it's a free society and we are entitled to our opinions, well, at least theoretically anyways. First of all, not being a student of English or for that matter psychology, I had to look the term "cognitive dissonance" up in dictionary.com, to fully understand Mr. Karthak's response. Are some of the postings n Sajha confused because people do what they realling do not belive in, do not practice what they preach and enter a state of cognitive dissonance as you say? Maybe, in fact undoubtedly, some do. That cannot be avoided. But look at why this thread started. Someone looked at your article and concluded that you were trying to say something about the present state and caste strucutre of Nepal. And I think what we were trying to do was understand what exactly you were trying to say in that paragraph. Often times, one writes something and the message that gets through is something else, like the issue with the cartoon in Nepali times that's been raised in this forum somewhere else. I do not think that is is "splitting hair", but we were trying to understand a statement. That;s all. I also did look up Ms. Thapa's article on TKP of Nov. 15th, and the thing that I take away from that article is the same thing that I took in after watching Spiderman, the movie - "With great power comes great resposibilit" (nice quote no). And if one agrees with that adage, one no longer can be a fiction writer and "brush" up facts or a journalist and write up "fiction", if I understood the article correctly. So in fact, a pure fiction writer (at least of historical novels or novels related to an existing place) or a true journalist does not exist. No matter how hard one tries, the fact that one is wriitng about some true event or place or historical fact, one must be true to the underlying structure and no matter how truthfully one tries to report, objectivity does not exisit in news. That's why we have Bill O'Reilly thriving and the rise of Fox news. So when Mr. Karthak, you write about Badamtam or Darjeeling or even your novel, you do have your opinions inserted into the piece. And since, I do not know you personally, the only way that I can know what you are saying is by reading what you are saying. Hopeless loop, isn't it? That's what I thought too. One thing that I can do,is though, instead of crying shrilly about whatever I do not agree about in your article is try to find an alternative expression or analysis by understanding your background and reading your current article with a-priori knowledge that comes from reading your past articles. And that was only why I "rambled" on last time.