There are two ways you could answer this question. To begin with, you can argue that the death penalty is an abhorrent, archaic and arrogant punishment that contradicts India’s claim to be a fai...
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“Can I ask you a personal question?”

That’s the sort of opening gambit I find hard to handle. To say no seems rude or, at least, needlessly defensive. On the other hand the danger...
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I wonder if you realise that Pakistan can boast of a strange but unique tradition? It’s produced some of the most charming dictators the world has known! I haven’t the faintest idea why this s...
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Whoever thought of the aphorism ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’ got it wrong. Forgiveness is the easy part. Once someone says sorry most of us are inclined to forgive. The difficult bit...
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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious

• If you say it loud enough
• You'll always sound precocious.

How easy it is to get angry but how difficult to accept you might yourself be wrong. Each time Mummy admonished me as a child I would fall foul of this maxim. I daresay most children are the same...
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I can’t remember the first time I met her. It was sometime in 1960. I was five years old and it’s probably lost in the mists of forgotten memory. Her mother was the Burmese Ambassador in Ind...
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Has Justice Pathak been unfair to Natwar-Singh whilst giving a substantial benefit of doubt to Congress? That’s the one niggling concern I cannot shake after reading his report. I’m not a law...
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With each passing day Jaswant Singh is tying himself in knots. Little did he foresee his claim there was a ‘mole’ in the Prime Minister’s Office in 1995 would boomerang. He was privy to thi...
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Have you heard the phrase a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? Well, a little English can lead to a hilarious situation. People unfamiliar with the language often express themselves in strang...
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