Echoes, The operative phrase I used was: "based on my very limited experience". Please go back and check. So, yes: based on my very limited experience, I do feel entirely justified in painting most of us as such . . . devoted to chasing a string of safe, predictable, middle-class successes without ever risking anything to stand up for our beliefs. This, by the way, is NOT a moral judgment -- but A point of view. You are welcome to disagree with it based on YOUR own experience, and that's fine. *** As for Paramendra, saying that people like him need to be tolerated even for their "wacky" views is DIFFERENT from saying that people like him are right. As a non-Tarai bahun, I find his commentaries quite fun and refreshing and thought-provoking even when I do not agree with most of them. My defense here is not to romanticise Paramendra's way of life and ideas but to underscore that so long as he does not harm anyone, let him do his thing. It's one thing to disagree with his ideas, but it's another to start psychoanalyze him in public as some are prone to do. Why do some of us have trouble accepting him as a fellow Nepali who thinks differently from most of us? Why hammer him down to some conformity when he's one of a kind? That said, I am confident that it's only a matter of time before he finds something in which he will go on to do very, very well. He has the smarts, and the energy. ********** San Lauray, Been really busy with work and travels. Thank you for reading my fortnighly pieces in The Nepali Times. Please feel free to disagree with what I have written there with your own counter-points so that the ensuing kura-kani will be much richer. Many thanks. oohi ashu