I admit, we are in the midst of war.

This serene picture is of a portion of Pakistan's best university, LUMS, but this week the campus is vacant for unnatural reasons and the people sitting around me discuss things that no civilian should have to worry about.
I finally admit that our nation is at war, when the war on terror has come to haunt the average Pakistani whose government acceded to the American government’s pressure to go after its own volatile tribesmen- and the fallout is here, as the average Pakistani is now a targeted enemy.

Educational institutions are closed across the country because the 'International Islamic University' was attacked last week in Islamabad, which one no one predicted.

Day after tomorrow, the students will be back. I wait for them, it is unnatural walking a vibrant and renowned university that is empty because of fear.

An ordinary day starts with having my car checked, despite my ID. I feel sorry for the security guards – they are the first under threat, and a serene campus duty is no longer friendly waves
at the gate.Checking our email now brings in security updates and tips - to guard against our cars, phones and selves being hijacked and used by terrorists, and evacuation plans. Lunch hour recently had the sound of sirens being tested as they were installed.
As I practice photography, sparks fly nearby as welders reinforce boundary walls with special measures.
I am a trained volunteer MFR (Medical First Respondent), and my team and I are to get together to practice for the aftermath of a terrorist attack, practice a triage situation - what to do in a mass emergency where there are many patients, where you determine which can be saved, which cannot and therefore you move on. I argued with my instructor the first time I heard this in class, nearly in tears.

This university is thought to be the institution under biggest threat, and one feels sorry for the administration trying to do everything it can to save the innocent lives that roam this campus, wanting only to learn, live and serve their country and provide for their families.

Yet it is strange.
Outside the weather is at its best and when I look out, appreciating the view of a pond and lush green lawns and beautiful sky, I can appreciate it and feel the serenity, even as I know that I am, along with others under threat at any time, but feeling secure in my prayer, and in the now.

Life is still lived, but there is an effort to be vigilant, and a nagging fear, and everyday discussions are influenced.

There is an effort to avoid public places, even stay alert as we walk on university campus, or walk anywhere - for any suspicious package, or person. Alert students have spotted bombs near their school's boundary wall elsewhere in the country, and a policeman riding in a bus noticed a passenger next to him feel unnaturally hard (turned out he was wearing a suicide jacket), and disaster has been averted.
But the fear has been planted in everyone’s mind. Where once the elite were safe, the cities were safe, all are equal for once in this country - in a very distressing way.
Prayer is the only answer. And efforts to establish peace.

Winding Summer

Summer is slowly winding. Where the shade is cool, but the sun is still too hot. I am sure there is a glorious time just before evening when the afternoon sun is warm as I like it, but I forget to experience it, or I cannot.. I am determined to get out of an office rut and live the life. Of sunshine, merriment, of waking,sleeping,eating and walking as I please, and all the time making a good living doing what I love, and making a positive difference in the lives of oh so many people. Insha Allah - God Willing.
I love to dream sometimes, and after a long absence of making up new dreams, I initially found it difficult to do so. Now I find how I have grown, how the dreams have mellowed and matured, and yet they are clearer still where they were daring.
There are clearer visions of places I want to be, somehow I am no longer into bungee jumping before I got a chance to try it out, somehow I do not want to own a zoo or a building full of persian cats, but I am now wanting to touch a redwood tree, travel the world, stand on a cliff and look down at a valley's treetops amidst the mist, and always, always be able to return 'home'.. to safety,warmth, loving family and friends, good food,good health and humour, good books, good fun and good decor.

Yet to explore..

I have yet to explore Old Lahore , especially armed with a good camera. I have also yet to get a DSLR (Excellent camera, excellent price.. See my dilemma? But a nice kind of one). Any and all suggestions/advice welcome!

A friend emailed from abroad saying she would be coming in late October (to spend Winter in Lahore) and asking whether I'd be a partner to going around historical monuments in Lahore to take photographs! Am I interested? Yes!

Full of crowds,traffic and pollution, Old Lahore would require a certain determination and escorts to explore..
Here is just a reminder of what is still there, may not be for long... old architecture, hardly given a whim..

Picture:Ghomti Bazar courtesy flickr

Cuppycake recipe - tried!

I found these gorgeous cupcakes pictured above, via Design Sponge, and am I glad I tried out the recipe!
I'll admit, I came across the recipe while I was fasting yesterday, and had to make them the VERY SAME DAY.
The buttercream frosting is delicious, and not to be skipped (note to self: quit skimping-out-frosting-altogether-shortcuts) especially because I cant say I liked the taste of the cake on its own.. I dont know why but the word 'industrial' kept coming to mind when I tasted just the cake.
Strange how a word can sometimes come to mind for something unrelated.

However, with the frosting, the taste is lovely, and it is a recipe to be made over again...
I am reminded of how when I was in third or fourth grade, my class used to look forward to the chocolate cupcakes that my mom would send at the end of year parties or my birthday.

Of fruitful root and yellow flowering trees

Summer in Lahore brings the Amaltas trees, as they are locally called, into bloom. I love seeing these flowers, especially since few other petals are found in this scorching heat. And flowering trees, I just find beautiful.

There is a young one planted right outside my house, pleasing us with one branch of blooms this year, and everywhere I see the Amaltas, I notice them. I do not know much about them, but this has to be one of my favourite trees for summer in Lahore.
In recent years, the authorities had taken to planting imported palms along roads, and recieved much praise and criticism, but more criticism, for failing to think about what a tree in Lahore must do.

You see, there is a manual for trees in Lahore that populate the common roads..

If you are a tree considering whether Lahore is right for you, consider the following:

Have you been along the Mall Road, known the area before it belonged to a new country called Pakistan? Lahore is yours.

Are you a big tree, a tree with a big trunk to make you look like you have always been there, so that no one questions your presence?

Do you promise to give shade in the summer to all the poor who rest underneath, and to the cars that whizz by?

Would you like the sun should filter in softly through the late afternoon and evening light, and then in winter, preferably be bare and let the warm sun through so all may sit again underneath, and enjoy its warmth?

Do you agree to be dense and friendly, and shield the birds and squirrels from human eyes and predators while they hold little concerts and games everyday, and even build their nests amongst your arms?

**
Year after year, being suited to the climate, they must thrive in Lahore, having taken up a Lahori identity, calmly throwing in a little bit of quiet and green into the dust, noise and pollution.

The new sleek palms did not offer the shade, nor were they suited to the climate.

Each tree, each animal thrives in their climate.

Each human would happily thrive in a climate of their choosing, yet, many times I wonder at how we ourselves are the yield to our sowing, and whether we may in our delirium choose the best for ourselves then.
I cannot help feel it is sometimes God deciding which climate we are best suited to, and we may discover that after a storm we couldn't withstand to feel our backs nearly breaking, we are still standing, that though we wanted the sun, our roots are taking hold into winter's hard soil.

They praise the shrub and the species that thrives in unsuitable conditions.

They must not forget the human race that also struggles to take fruitful root where it is planted.

Decorated Public Transport

Mystical, eccentric, larger than life are the paintings covering every inch of metal on trucks,buses and oil tankers in Pakistan. I grew up without knowing that it was unusual in other parts of the world.
My personal favourite thing to do is look for quotes written on backs of rickshaws, and sometimes trucks, often hilarious but mostly with wisdom and bittersweet wit tinged with sadness, eye openers really.
Those merit a post of their own.
A look at mostly passenger buses, that when I was small, had very loud, VERY long musical notes for a horn, very crazy and hard to describe really, from whistles and bird-screams to the kind of sounds you would hear if you handed a bunch of six year olds at a birthday a variety of musical instruments.
I hardly ever in one, but when I did in Gujrat, I remember not being able to see properly out the windows because they were in dark colorful tints!

( Pictures courtesy various sources on the internet, mostly Peter Grant's photography.)

Dunes, Sky, Action

This is the kind of picture that can inspire a 'wow' for a moment.
The kind that makes you take note of the photographer.
The kind that makes you want to see something fresh and exhilirating yourself, and capture it.
This picture is by Chase Jarvis.

I love that the action puts still more emphasis on the beauty and majestic grace of the dunes and desert sky.
Soon after, I am sure, nature would have blown away the footprints of the dancer, and the sands shifted once more, unimpressed, unaffected.

Lahoris in the Rain

Rain is unusual here.
So when it rains, people come out especially to watch. Just the rain. They will pull up chairs in their porch and sit, as my parents do, and their six month old grand daughter is brought out too. The wonder and solemn silence with which she sits in the lap and stares out at the clouded sky shows she is aware of its difference, aware of the glistening rain drops having their fall broken by outstretched leaves, parched from the scorching 42C sun that burns down every day and will probably do the same tomorrow. Monsoon season is a crazy season, brought to crazy people, from a humid, hot still spell it will very suddenly change to cool wind and rain, then just as suddenly go back to scorching sun.

It rains, so it is time for rainfood.

Menus are changed, quickly whipped up. Lahore loves it food deep fried, and now is the time to have hot oily food that you simply cannot want to eat in the heat otherwise. Every vendor knows it is the time for samosas and pakoras, every household knows it, and somewhere people will even make curry out of gramflour and drop in pakoras – and a university community will troop in to eat, facing the windows as they do. Tea is a common addiction, every couple of hours on the hottest days,but today it is cradled as if it were a rare treat.

It rains, and people leave their work to gather outside under a dripping veranda .

They will watch the ground, they will watch any one who is out in it. Lahoris will always look amused at umbrellas when they see one, despite legendary fierce sunshine and despite the crazy monsoon rain that comes down like a white unrelenting sheet, they still consider them as eccentric pieces depicting an unnecessary fuss.
And even if all there is opposite is a building, today they see and feel. People who otherwise succumb to the mundane without a thought, never changing their routine or adding something new, will somehow for an hour, for as long as it rains, wake up.

They will suddenly smell the earth, the rain, they will suddenly be grateful for every scent of steaming food and wet earth. They will suddenly be spontaneous, and they will suddenly feel, and take a walk in the rain, laugh with delight when they get soaked after a ‘necessary’ few steps to get from A to B,and then brandish their damp clothes like armour, or put out their hands gingerly and draw them back in to examine the rain-drop on their palm. They will suddenly see, and look at the silent trees around them that commanded attention but got none before, and beauty in leaves that are shades greener with the dust washed off of them. Yes, that is it. One of the most polluted cities will have its dust beaten down by heaven-sent crystals, and the skies, those purple-grey cloudy skies seem clear and beautiful.
Even the traditional red brick buildings of college buildings are beautiful to look at, for they turn a deep red when wet, and send out an earthy smell of bricks that remind you of things as you pass by.
They will even get all romantic and imagine new scents.

Yes there is a mess of mud and traffic, children swimming in roads flooded because the gutters do not work without a care of contamination, wild boys jumping into the muddy canal running through the city just so they can swim in the rain, but people generally love rain here.

Lahoris feel sorry for those who cannot enjoy rain, those who have come from climates where it rains all the time, they feel sorry for them having to miss out on the ‘seeing’ and pleasure that comes with rain and changes the feel of an everyday, changes moods, and they also feel sorry for them having to live with rain as an almost daily occurence.

For you see, much as Lahoris love their rain, they don’t want it everyday. And much as they love to complain about their sun, they would rather have it everyday.

Above Pic featured by Daily Times: Lahore: A green belt near the canal inundated with rain water.