Nepe wrote: "If you can not make distinction between a person and a cause, then this discussion is useless." I can make that distinction, but that still would NOT mean anything. In Nepal, whether you like it or not, Nepali Congress IS Girija, Girija IS Nepali Congress. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling herself. Where, for instance, is Gagan Thapa these days? Girija -- much like, for instance, some of your comrades in that so-called democracy google group called me -- publicly called Gagan a "rajabadi" with ZERO evidence. Soon, Gagan was pushed aside. Now, as things stand, Gagan's career as a Koirala-family-led Nepali Congress activist appears to be finished. See, how easy it is in Nepal (and in Nepali communities) to stick labels on one's potential rivals in an effort to discredit them and push them aside, for fear that they might eclipse/overshadow you? The larger point is: Just as king's bhaardars are blindly loyal to the person of the king and NOT to the institution of monarchy, Girija's bhardaars too are blindly loyal to Girija the person and NOT to the institution that is Nepali Congress, which, in any case, has long been running like a khattam family business anyway. It's just that, of the two, Girija's bhardaars can chant a little louder about "democracy" on the street. That's all. **************** Nepe wrote: "As for my treatment to you, I might have been unkind to you for your failure to show solidarity to professional groups who came to street to oppose the King's take over." Not only were you "unkind", you were also foolish to do that. And the reason is this. For many days, I watched those demonstrations right on the streets of Kathmandu. I can tell you FIRSTHAND that there were NO "professional groups who came to street to oppose the King's take over". There were individual professionals, yes, in those rallies; but no professional groups as such. That is why, those protest programs fizzled out soon enough, and, today, there remain no "professional groups" to provide continual sustenance to the khattam netas' protest programs. Those who took part in those protest programs at the time in individual capacities have since seen that they were being used by the netas and the media, and have since stayed away WHILE remaining, from a distance, sympathetic to the andolan's broader ideals, which, alas, appears to recede further day by day. Your foolishness was and is to think that ONLY street protests represented a clear measurement that one was/is actually opposed to the king's taking over, and then use that as a yardstick to publicly measure the DQ (democracy quotient) of jagirays like me. There were/are MANY forms of through which one could protest. In my case, for what it was PUBLICLY worth, drawing examples from around the world, I used my Nepali Times pieces to think aloud about democracy, autocracy, Nepal's worsening position and so on. Sure, I wish I could have done more. But then, I do not live in a world where there are 50 hours in a day! One does what one can, and learns to live with it with a clear conscience. oohi ashu