Two speeches. One I was invited to give. The other, I invited myself to speak at. Both occasions ended with a smattering of applause—polite, appreciative, and perhaps even a little relieved that I had finished. But that’s where the similarity ended. At the first one, held in a quiet, wood-paneled…


Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.