The only occasion when the prime minister perked up during his otherwise somewhat insipid press conference was when he castigated Narendra Modi in uncharacteristically abrasive terms, thereby giving the latter a taste of his own bitter medicine.
While doing so, Manmohan Singh virtually recalled the description by media personnel of the Gujarat chief minister as a "mass murderer" for his role during the 2002 riots. The prime minister's biting observation - that if being "strong" meant "presiding over the mass massacre of innocent citizens", it wasn't the kind of strength which he wanted - was yet another example of his combativeness.