General Musharraf flew out of India less than 72 hours after he had landed at Palam airport in Delhi. In the three working days that he was there, contrary to what the world media feels, breakthroughs were made at various levels. Given the background of hostilities in the recent past, it was no mean achievement to sit together and share the same bread and listen to the same music and also talk business – the business of opening a new chapter in the Indo-Pak relations. The opening paragraph of a new chapter is always the toughest part – people write, delete and re-write, maybe many times over. One hopes that is what happened in Agra.

Media and academics were sceptical and cynical right from the start – much before the Agra Summit lay open its doors to the world press. It was anybody’s guess that General Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee were not meeting to present daintily gift-wrapped solutions to each other – it was the intent behind the Summit that mattered – the intent to resolve long-standing issues and to end the ongoing and meaningless conflict and killings. Begum Sehba’s presence brought the much-needed softness to what could have been plain ‘hard talk’.

From a cosmic angle – the issues that confront mankind defy comprehension. Within the grand scheme of our Universe with its countless galaxies, the South Asian region, or for that matter the Earth, is not even the size of a pin-head. On this pin-head reside millions of miniscule beings with finite lives – bent on destroying each other during their lifetime – for what? We fight over our beliefs, our monuments that we call temples, mosques, churches and gurudwaras, we fight over little stretches of ice and chunks of mountains and territory – we must provide endless amusement to the Creator who, perhaps, is watching the result of his wrongly wired creation.

14 July, the day Indo-Pak ‘Peace Summit’ began, was also the day the-south-asian.com completed one year of its existence. It has been a great journey – together with all our readers. We hope, we will, break many thought barriers during this journey – and be one, at least, in our thoughts.