Spring has little time to unfold in this country. Soon it will be followed by summer and burning heat. Nature has to make haste in order to efficiently use the time. The trees quickly start flourishing. Suddenly the look of avenues and hills has changed. Lately I can smell jasmine in the air and in every corner I can see hemp. The newspaper informs about pollen concentrations on a daily basis. The pollen count informs me that in my neighbourhood 7,438 Paper Mulberry, 74 pine, 88 grass, 20 Alternaria and 25 Cannabis pollen are found in every cubic meter of air. Thank God I don’t have a problem with that. Besides, I am sure I have been exposed to much higher concentrations of some of the above mentioned herbs in my life.
It is the time of the year when I would like to slow the sunset down or even stop it at a certain point when the air gets fresh and sunlight casts a honey-coloured light. Talking about sweet things: a month from now the mango season will be on. It appears to be the fifth season here in Pakistan. My friend and driver, Asif, opened his eyes widely when I asked him for the start of the mango season. The glow in his eyes reminded me of a child waking up on Christmas Day (or Eid Ul Fitr in this part of the world).
A further change is about to take place. I will be deployed to one of the filed locations. This time however I won’t be going to the summer resort of the Swat valley but rather to the other side into the desert of Punjab. The town is called Rahim Yar Khan and was, according to some rumours I have heard lately when talking about the place, the hottest place on earth some years ago. I researched the internet but I couldn’t find information proving this rumour. Anyway, the image that is created by this talk gives a pretty good idea of what the summer will be like down there in the proximity of the Thar desert. I have been to this desert five years ago when I was travelling India. Between the cities of Bikaner and Jaiselmer I set a personal heat record: 50°C.
However there are also advantages in the south of Punjab: they have a whole lot of mangos!
