Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on one of his frequent sojourns around the country, came to Bathinda on Friday. The Indian army’s elite strike corps is garrisoned not far from where he spoke. The border too is not too far away. Its villagers had felt the pain of tensions with Pakistan when they were asked to evacuate their homes in the middle of the harvest season while their compatriots in Rajasthan stayed put.  There is no doubt the relationship with Pakistan seems irretrievably settled in a deep hole. These days the battle is being fought in Kashmir and both sides have expelled eight diplomats each.Pakistan’s main foreign policy point person Sartaj Aziz has signalled his intent to attend an international conference on Afghanistan to be held in Amritsar. Clearly, this was an opportunity for South Block to extricate itself from its self-spun web of inconsistent policy statements. Modi, however, feels there should be no looking back from the kadak policy he has fashioned for Pakistan. That is why, almost as if he was turning a screw on Pakistan’s leadership, the Prime Minister spoke against letting a drop of “India’s water” to enter Pakistan. As the rising body-count of Indian soldiers after the “surgical strike” shows, Modi may have kept his domestic audience engrossed with his reality shows. But it is another matter to try and impose them on Pakistan.Pakistan, more than India, has played this game with greater dexterity and with mightier adversaries like the Soviet Union and the US.  It will be happy to match skills with the Indians in Modi’s shoot and scoot policy. And it is making it difficult for the Prime Minister to walk back from this path, especially because he was singularly responsible for building the anti-Pakistani mindset dominating the Indian domestic public opinion. Aziz’s visit can hardly alter the deep structural divide that has engulfed India and Pakistan. But it could provide the opportunity to reduce the possibility of emotions and tensions getting out of control. Unless the Modi strategy is to let tensions simmer and bring them to a boil whenever there is depletion in his political capital.