What happened on Aug. 22 in India-Pakistan bilateral context was neither unthinkable nor unexpected. The nuclear armed estranged neighbors had yet another round of peace talks scuppered even before they could begin: This time at the level of national security advisers.

The NSA-level talks between India and Pakistan in New Delhi on Aug. 23-24 were called off on the eve of their scheduled start.

As usual, both sides blamed each other for the collapse of the talks even before they could begin. Let’s not get into the polemics of who was responsible for the talks that were not to be. Suffice it to say that both sides must share the blame for the huge setback.

India told Pakistan bluntly that either they should dump Kashmiri separatists or the NSA talks and made it clear that the two could not go hand in hand.

New Delhi said it was not laying any preconditions and sought to remind Islamabad that its move of riding two horses simultaneously — holding NSA talks with India on the one hand and engaging the Kashmiri separatists on the other hand — was self defeating and therefore unacceptable.

It was déjà vu in the India-Pakistan context as India had unilaterally canceled the foreign secretary level talks on the same grounds exactly one year ago.

Then also the Indian case was: Either talk to them or us. But this time the Indians had learned from their diplomatic blunder of last August and were determined not to singe their hands yet again diplomatically.

The Indians had decided that this time, come what may, they won’t repeat the same mistake and cancel the talks. So, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj addressed a press conference on Aug. 22 in New Delhi and said Pakistani NSA Sartaj Aziz was “welcome' to visit New Delhi provided he does not insist on meeting the Kashmiri separatist leaders and limits the contours of his conversation with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval only on terrorism. She said these were not “preconditions” and evoked the spirit of Simla and Ufa agreements.

Pakistan cried foul and blamed India for laying “unacceptable” preconditions and said it was pointless to go ahead with the talks under these circumstances.

It is indeed painful to see the two South Asian neighbors to lock horns yet again on same issues.

The level of talks changes. The dramatis personae change. But the end result remains the same. This time it was even worse as the talks appeared jinxed and were called off even before they could begin.

Strangely, the two governments were vying with each other to scupper the talks while maintaining a facade of their good intent to go ahead with these talks. It shows that the two sides had not done the required spadework for holding these talks. It demonstrates that a talk mechanism arrived at a summit meeting between the two prime ministers can fall prey to India-Pakistan mutual suspicion because the two premiers had not done adequate homework.

The United States has already made known its disappointment and disapproval of the collapsed talks and urged the two neighbors to re-engage and resume talks. But this is easier said than done. Indications are that the India-Pakistan frigidity is likely to continue for next few months and the two prime ministers, Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif, are unlikely to meet in New York next month.

In diplomacy there are no full stops. There can be commas and semi colons. One only hopes that the NSA talks fiasco is only a comma, which won’t put the two neighbors’ bilateral relations in a coma.

The problem is that India and Pakistan have long been behaving like two immature siblings who always start a conversation with the past.

This is a wrong approach. Instead, both of them need to be liberal and broadminded.

India and Pakistan need to start a dialogue where their past is buried and they talk in the present with an eye on the future. Both know that this is the right strategy to move forward and yet find themselves caught in the web of distrust, which is of their own making.

They should be mindful of the famous quote: “What a tangled web we weave, when we first learn to deceive.”

The biggest worry in the just failed NSA talks is that the mechanism failed to take off even though it was conceptualized and initiated at the prime ministers’ level. This is indeed an alarm bell not only for the two protagonists but also for the entire international community.

It points to the urgent need that the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors need to have the barest modicum of trust and responsibility for engaging with one another.

India and Pakistan need to stay engaged. They need to begin to trust each other with the basic template: Trust but verify. This is the only way forward.