Anyway you look at it, that was not a smart remark, Mr Modi, and your comparison sucked. They say smart people say and do the stupidest things. I don’t know you and have always held that I’d like to actually find out what you stand for and why people who love you do so unconditionally and are ready to defend you despite anything to the contrary. But I have searched for quotes that could typify you and your values and I have come up empty-handed. No, this.

However hard your supporters might bat for you, on this one you are caught at silly mid-off and I mean off. Don’t you have a PR team, don’t you have advisors, don’t you have experts at your level who do damage containment?

How in the hell can anyone do this puppy dog metaphor and expect it to sell? Even animal lovers like myself would not link a vicious blood-soaked riot of a scar with running over a puppy. You could easily have said something about distant relatives dying or people we know of passing away in tragic circumstances and how sad we feel, you did not have to go careening off at such a tangent. Even if you are rubbernecking a traffic accident you feel saddened. Right, so why did you canter off homo sapiens and go all fauna on us? What, Sir, were you thinking when you came up with this brilliant stupidity.

And then all these spokespersons who surge forward to explain your well-meaning comment make matters worse by being clumsy and absurd. Which idiot in India or elsewhere will find your statement soaked in generosity of spirit and a great and sensitive heart? That is what is insulting.

I read it several times over and while I would have ignored it for its sheer nonsensical content what got up my nose was your side making it look like Shakespearean high thought or poetry. Tagore you are not, Mr Modi, so let’s not go there. I think you should just put a pinkie on your lips and let this one pass because it has the power to make a stink.