Pravin, like his brother, is argumentative, intelligent and energetic. I remember talking to him immediately after Princess Diana was killed in a car crash. Pravin tried to argue that Diana’s death should be seen in the context of some powerful people feeling that she had lowered the prestige of Buckingham Palace. There was a long argument in the course of which we digressed and discussed the psyche of the killers. What does fiction, including murder mysteries, tell us about why some people can kill, and most can’t, we wondered. Pravin appeared to be an aficionado of crime fiction, as I am. The murder he tried to commit, though, is stranger and sadder than any fiction.

The writer is editor, Loksatta