…Meanwhile, In Lahore: Night Magic

If you ask me, there’s something about winter nights in Lahore. Summer nights have their own enchantments, but winter nights invariably are the magical ones. The ones where you feel something in the very air.

Here, winter nights smell like muted jasmine, pink tea, cardamom, and the soft wool of quilts that have been stored in closets the since the previous season of frost with moth balls, or neem leaves.

Winter means lazy mornings, cold showers when water heaters just refuse to work, or when the government has cut off our supply of Sui gas and/or electricity (Pakistani problems…). For some, it means flu and tissues, red noses and freezing fingers. And for others, curling up beside an old heater, with a blanket, reading.

But invariably, winter nights in Lahore carry their own brand of magic, that you just cannot find anywhere else. The sky even, never turns pitch black, rather stays purply blue like spilled wine, and is just as intoxicating. Going out is a heady experience, and makes you feel like you can do anything, be anything. And it makes you believe in the city, its nights and days, the moonshine it pours ceaselessly.

Lahore is, quite beside itself in winter.

Its a place of magic and dreams and spells.