This new monthly column shall endeavour to look at South Asia in totality, as a region that is greater than the sum of its parts. For SOUTHASIASPHERE, political boundaries that divide the people of this region are facts, but what makes us all one is a more significant reality. Consequently, no member-country of SAARC gets a 'quota' in this column. 'Saarcy' will instead concentrate on issues, ideas and trends that affect us all in the region, for better or worse. Saarcy is a Nepali term for cobbler: the humble craftsman who repairs shoes, an untouchable in the hierarchy of caste-ridden Hindu society. The pseudonym perfectly suits a columnist who aims at nothing less than mending the shoes of readers' minds so that they can travel to what Kazi Nazrul Islam called the 'real' battlefield:
The heart is the battlefield
where Krishna sang the great Gita,
it is the field where the shepherd Magi made friends