Dubai: Ever since the news of resumption of India-Pakistan cricketing ties broke on Monday afternoon, the readers’ polls and social networking websites have gone into a tizzy. The range of emotions, both for and against the tour, clearly shows the passion that the game can ignite between the two countries.

India and Pakistan will play a series of cricket matches later this year, marking the resumption of bilateral sporting ties after five years. Cricket matches between the South Asian rivals are not only one of the world’s most intense sporting rivalries - they are often intertwined with politics.

The cricket diplomacy that the BCCI is now forcing upon the grieving souls of Mumbai’s dead, is schlemiel raised to the nth power. Like a bird depositing pebbles in the mating game, India has been depositing dossiers while Pakistan’s sceptics get to say their lines yet again: you are going to get punched in the face again, Mr Chidambaram.

CPD University Fellow Rob Asghar published an article on July 4th in the Christian Science Monitor titled "The 'America Effect': How immigrants fall crazy in love". Reflecting on the experience of his family, originally from Pakistan, Asghar traces through the ways in which an American experience forever shapes the lives of immigrants who come to the nation.

This groundbreaking event brought together live studio audiences and government officials in Kabul and Islamabad to discuss the way forward for Afghanistan and Pakistan as the U.S. prepares to withdraw its troops in 2014, as well as the role Pakistan should play in the reconciliation process.

It is within this cacophony of negativity and peril that I had the chance to meet and interview, not diplomats, nor politicians, but regular, young Pakistani citizens who happen to be in an acclaimed rock and roll band called Noori. Noori are on their first music tour of the United States, sponsored by the U.S. Department of States' new cultural diplomacy initiative, Center Stage.

In order to bring peace at the global level and enhance harmony among the nations, diplomatic channels must be exploited to their maximum. These views were expressed by Chief of Protocol and Additional Foreign Secretary Ghalib Iqbal in an interaction at the fringes of Global Chiefs of Protocol Conference held at the State Department in Washington.

Immigrants' passion for America warps plans and bends dreams. My Pakistani parents realized that America changed their approach to life, just as it has changed everything else it has touched. American freedom is even helping (slowly) moderate latter-day Islam.