Talk of searching for the Holy Grail. Indo-Pak amity is harder to find for it requires diminutive men to show greater courage and wisdom than the failed giants who were their fathers.

Even so, as both countries try to pick up the pieces again - under no little external prodding, it may be added - they have to answer two basic questions. With as much honesty and clarity as two nations not renowned for either quality are capable of summoning.

Do we really want peace? Would we be better off with normal relations - the kind that exist, say, between France and Belgium - or, on both sides of the divide, do we have a vested interest in sabre-rattling and mud-wrestling?

And the second question: what can be the contours of a settlement that can finally put an end to a confrontation whose futility has been amply proven over the last 55 years?

The first question is easier to answer. Eternal confrontation never served anyone's interests. Feeding a huge defence establishment is doing Pakistan no good. And the festering sore in Kashmir holds back India's drive for a better place at the global big table.

Our fates are not intertwined. There is no need to nurse this illusion. India must pursue its destiny and we must pursue ours. But we do ourselves no favour by turning our border into a perennial battle zone.

Thanks to our nuclear weapons, we also take strange pride in the subcontinent's current status as the world's most dangerous flash point. Does this mean that we are not responsible for our actions and that the world must come and pull our chestnuts out of the fire?

Much of our nuclear posturing is just that: posturing. Which doesn't mean we spike our nuclear weapons, America's war on Iraq being the strongest argument yet for acquiring - or, in our two cases, retaining - a nuclear capability. But we should certainly be thinking of preventing a nuclear arms race, the one thing both India and Pakistan can do without.

It would be a happy day indeed when their nuclear weapons, instead of being aimed at each other, are carefully calibrated to furnish a common defence of the subcontinent. The stuff of dreams? Undoubtedly, although when trying to step out of the gutter it's not a bad idea keeping one's eyes fixed on the stars.

But what can be the outlines of an acceptable settlement? This is a tough one to answer. But a sense of realism can prove useful. There is no ideal solution which can equally satisfy Pakistan, India and the people of Kashmir, none which can accommodate the maximum desires of all three parties.

Pakistan can't get on the negotiating table what it has failed to win on the battlefield. India can't pretend that Kashmir is like any other state of the Indian Union or that it faces no problem in Kashmir. As for the people of Kashmir, if they are for independence, as many of them appear to be, they won't get it because India and Pakistan both cannot countenance the idea.

The Security Council resolutions calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir may represent our maximum position but for all the relevance or life left in them they are dead. We have to begin from the ground realities of today.

There is, alas, no going round the Line of Control which for as long as we can tell will remain the effective frontier dividing Kashmir. This line even has an historic sanctity behind it because it represents the maximum extent of our military endeavours. We've tried changing the status quo in Kashmir. By God how we've tried, from the first shots fired in 1947 right down to the Kargil adventure of 1999. We've only succeeded in making it more permanent. If ever a case can be made out for a farewell to arms it is here.

The days of Kashmiri jihad are numbered. Under relentless pressure (from our American friends, who else?) we have already executed a surreptitious U-turn on Kashmir. Movement across the LoC is down to a trickle. But the world having changed and no one, least of all our American friends, in a mood to listen to lectures on the distinction between a freedom struggle and terrorism, even this trickle will have to end.

The trick lies in reading the writing on the mountains and executing this U-turn ourselves with as much grace as we can muster without having to do the same thing under more pressure.

Remember that the pledge to close the tap was given to the Americans last year at the height of the Indian military build-up. All that the Americans are now asking is for us to fulfil that pledge.

'Jihad' or its American-sponsored variety came to this part of the world courtesy the Americans when they helped bankroll and arm the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan back in the 1980s. That was when the 'Muj' and Osama bin Laden lookalikes were American heroes. If the dynamics of 'jihad' are now being brought to an end it is again courtesy our American friends.

Pakistan was no more autonomous then than it is now. Such is life, with bag-carriers in the end left only with their pretensions, all else being stripped from them.

Which is not to say the impending end of this chapter is not a good thing. There are some things we would never have done on our own. It took September 11 and American arm-twisting to rid us of our Taliban obsession. The Americans are now pushing us to undergo another reality check, this time on Kashmir. Which leads to the surprising conclusion that there may be a good side to even the worst imperialism.

No one is going to give us a settlement which brings about changes in Kashmir's geography books. We have to start getting used to this idea. We thus have to live with the LoC. Not as an international frontier because accepting it as such will immediately set off cries of betrayal and a sellout from the usual lobbies: the ideology-of-Pakistan lobby and the religious parties or factions in the forefront of Kashmiri jihad.

This no Pakistani government can afford, least of all a quasi-military one which has gone out of its way to appear tough on Kashmir. So the fiction will have to be maintained that the LoC is a temporary line pending a final settlement. This is the Taiwan-approach and why not? If it is good enough for the Chinese, why not us?

But what about India and the people of Kashmir? The greatest enemy to subcontinental realism is the too-clever-by-half attitude of its ruling classes. A farewell to jihad and the sanctification of the LoC will represent a great temptation for India to beat its chest, proclaim victory, sit back and do nothing.

After the 1971 war India did the same and paid no heed to Kashmiri aspirations. It paid the price 17 years later when Kashmiris, having had their fill of lies and chicanery, took to the gun and stood up against Indian rule. Pakistan's leading think-tank and peace project, the ISI, exploited this situation. It didn't invent it. Is the Indian leadership any wiser? Has it learnt any lessons from the blood-soiled experience of the last 14 years? The jury will be out on this one.

So for anything on Kashmir to prove enduring India will have to do three things. (1) Get the genuine representatives of the Kashmiri people on board and engage them in the search for peace. (2) Sharply reduce its military presence in Kashmir to match the end of jihad, the one without the other being meaningless. (3) Give maximum autonomy to the people of Indian Kashmir.

The LoC cam then become a peaceful frontier, open to the flow of goods and people, with both India and Pakistan pulling back the bulk of their troops from their forward positions.

The demilitarization of the Siachen Glacier, as it was pre-1984, must accompany these steps. The standoff in Siachen, in conditions more bitter than the Arctic winter, must be the most pointless conflict in the whole world. Both countries owe it to themselves to put an end to this madness.

All these things won't happen in a day but they should happen soon if India and Pakistan are to leave their past behind and step into the future. It's a great test for their leaderships: for the army here and the BJP there. As so often in the past, will this test be flunked, followed by the usual battening down of the hatches and the drawing in of the wagons? Or are we about to see a miracle unfold?