I've spent six months or so working "virtually" with two people, one in India, the other, in America. Apart from a fleeting handshake in an office in Delhi with my Indian colleague, that's as far as any physical contact has gone - we've never all been around the same table, everything's been handled through phone calls, e-mails, and latterly, IM'ing.

Yes, you do build up pictures, it's like piecing a jigsaw together in a sense - the way an e-mail is worded might be a piece of sky; tone of voice on a call, a bit of the edge; a casual conversation before a business call starts could make a corner, and so on.

Today we finally met. Yet, it's not how close, or not, they were to my imagined picture I'm left with. Something much different. I could n't stop myself thinking on how it symbolised our relative economic clout - me, a Brit, or the Old World; my American colleague, on the other hand, with Today's World, figuratively, in their grasp; and together, the pair of us looking at our Indian colleague as the New World. Tomorrow's World. I could feel a baton being passed on.

I spent a month in India earlier this year. There was nothing I saw to undermine the idea that India is not en route to becoming an economic powerhouse. It can't be anything but. There's almost a communal sense of mission to educate, develop and uplift.