One year should be period enough to let passions ebb and allow the world to view an admittedly cataclysmic event with a certain detachment. Yet the attack on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001, still retains an immediacy and devilish rawness. It is not yet possible to give the single-most audacious act of violence in the modern era its correct place in history's hierarchy. That task has to be left to another generation.

Even so 9/11-one date that was a kick in the face of certitude, one abbreviation that will probably stay with you for the rest of your life-inevitably defined the course of the 365 days that came in its wake. It changed so much and so quickly. In hours, George W. Bush changed from an unsure, untrusted President to a steely leader. In days, India, China and Russia changed from part-time US sceptics to allies in the "war against terror". In weeks, Pakistan changed from pariah to pet. In months, Afghanistan changed from dystopia to tribal-ocracy.

The Islamist menace that had shattered Kashmir, rocked Xinjiang, shaken Chechnya had now seared the heart of America. The US mainland had not been invaded since 1812. The burning of the White House by British troops in 1814 was so remote as to seem almost mythological. Nineteen hijackers and one ringmaster were all it took for the US to grapple with "a new normal". A year down the line, the fortitude is beginning to loosen, the domestic compulsions are back. The Bush Administration itself is divided on whether to take the war that crippled Al-Qaida-and apparently sent Mullah Omar scurrying away on a rickshaw-into Iraqi territory. America has to choose between the two extremes that forever call out to it-unilateralism and isolationism.

For India, the 9/11 legacy is a mixed one. Afghanistan's relative stability-more relative than stable- and the emasculation of Pakistan's "strategic depth" doctrine are definite victories. Yet the BJP-led Government has to explain to its constituency the dualism of allegedly successful coercive diplomacy and inability to "sort out" Pakistan. America's assault on Taliban-ruled Afghanistan has set new benchmarks in battling terrorism.

This is not a time for closure. Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, is far from finished. The Arab world is a dormant volcano but may not always be so. Kashmir still festers. The Taliban is a step or two, or a car bomb or two, away from Hamid Karzai's regime in Kabul. The spectre of Al-Qaida, the terror's leading transnational corporation, is omnipresent. Ground Zero is not someplace far away. It is playing close to you.