Nepe, When political parties cannot decide what to do, thereby making space for the king to seize his opportunity to do as he pleases, you are against the king. Fine. But when Nepali academics start fighting with one another, asking the king to step in to "save Royal Nepal Academy (RNA)", you bend over backward to justify their action by saying that, well, that's cultural and not political. It seems that you are more interested in the absence of OBVIOUS signs of democracy than in the presence of INVISIBLE yet more important signs of democracy in Nepal. Let me explain: Absence of obvious signs would be, yes, no elections, no MPs, no Parliament and so on. But these bundle of visible institutions ALONE does not make up our demoracy. After all, these things were there during the Panchayati times too. Presence of INVISIBLE yet more important signs of democracy would be the right to criticise the King and the parties publicly, to demonstrate against them -- as are happening in Nepal -- and so on and on. The King, with unintended help from muddled politicians, helped castrate the VISIBLE signs. But he seems not to have touched upon the invisible signs as of now. That is why you can chant anti-King slogans in Ratna Park and NOT get arrested like you did during Panchayati times. This presence of invisible right, to me, represents some hope, that the King is going half-way. Now, it's up to the parties to meet him half way too, and give Nepal a FRESH start by: (a) uniting against the Maoists, and (b) going for the elections, come hell or highwater. I don't know the King personally, but as a former businessman he must know that when customers get used to one kind of better service, they do not go back to preferring old kype of service. Translated it means when the Nepali public has gotten the taste of the invisible signs of democracy in the last 14 years (signs that have been more empowering to them), it's only a matter of time before they start demanding the visible signs too. The king may be a lot of things, be he is not stupid. ***** Anyway, being some sort of a global vagabond, I don't live in Nepal these days and am "far from the action", so to speak. But I aim to bring up this and other issues in clear, conversational Nepali language (thank God for laptopn, unicode and Internet connections!!) in columns I will soon start to write for Nepal's leading national Nepali-language daily. Stay tuned and give me mercilessly critical feedbacks so that these and other ideas, previously explored on Sajha and elsewhere, reach a wider audience across Nepal. [Sadly, this means: Fewer postings on Sajha from me :-(] oohi ashu