Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh

There are people who are flashing your credentials around – your degrees, your achievements, your genial nature.

While it is perfectly fine for anyone to take sides, you are even worse than Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. That man has no degrees to flaunt, no nothing. When he called Sarah Palin gorgeous there was an uproar.

You attend an international meet and are supposed to represent India. What do you go and do? You sit with President Barack Obama, a newbie, and ask him to sign an autograph for your daughter!

It might be pointed out that you are not a young father with a kindergarten-going child. That too would be inexcusable, although a trifle charming in certain circles.

Here, you are being touted as Prime Ministerial candidate for the largest democracy and you ask Obama for his autograph? Don’t you have the good sense to understand that you are not on a skiing holiday in the Alps and are speaking on behalf of all of India? The India that we want the world to respect.

You did your little jiggly-wiggly act with the US by signing the nuclear deal, but at least it had the fake stamp of energy and lighting up our villages. What will this convey?

It is sad that you cannot even sneak out of the little mess. The strange thing is you probably don’t even think it is a mess. The fact that you went about it so nonchalantly – and they hail you as a great diplomat – shows that you are completely out of tune with the concept of statesmanship and self-esteem. Even the common man and woman know that we do not want to kowtow to these super powers.

We have had enough of this soft-spoken nonsense. I would like to state in no uncertain terms that you, Mr. Prime Minister, have made a huge boo-boo. The people of India are disappointed and angry.

Now it is an autograph. What next? A T-shirt? And if you do have a Blackberry Storm, do you say, “Ah, even Obama uses it?”