Lahore's cosmopolitan spirit is under attack. Not by malevolent mortals this time, but by a thick pall of pollution reminiscent of pre-CNG Delhi. The electricity plays hookey too, and generators, it is said, are a brisk business. During the day, the heat is oppressive, singing my silver earrings against my skin.
So when will the rains come, I ask Jaffer, my auto-rickshaw driver as we speed through Sunday's empty streets down the Mall Road. On the left, Lahore's Museum (with the world famous Gandhara-style sculpture of the Starving Buddha inside) stands like a splendid sentinel in exposed brick work, on the right Anarkali Bazaar is cheek-by-jowl with a similar period Punjab University building (the students are all swotting for their exams).
Further down, the Sufi shrine of Data Durbar is alive with hundreds of devotees. Just beyond, the Minar-e-Pakistan towers above the horizon. This concrete-and-stone minaret was built in the Sixties on the site of the Muslim League's Lahore Resolution on March 23, 1940, demanding the creation of a separate state for Muslims.
So when Atal Behari Vajpayee visited here in February 1999, inaugurating the peace bus between Delhi and Lahore, the Pakistani establishment believed India - or rather the BJP - had finally dropped its dream of an "akhand Bharat" or "undivided India" that stretched from Kabul to Cox's Bazaar, and had come to terms with the idea of Pakistan.
I have had to shout out my question to Jaffer again. He can barely hear me above the din his own auto's making. "Sab Allah ki marzi hai," he replies. It is all Allah's will.
Like all journalists worth their parachuting salts in foreign climes, Jaffer is in the act of becoming a barometer to understanding Pakistan. I know I will soon meet various politicians and economists in well-appointed air-conditioned rooms and drink iced tea and freshly squeezed watermelon juice with them just to beat the heat - all in an effort to piece together this most interesting, but puzzling country.
Right now, though, Jaffer is my eyes and ears. I can barely hear him over the auto's din, but I know I am made of sterner stuff.
I also now begin to appreciate the thick plastic flaps that snugly cover the open sides of the auto-rickshaw at the back. I had railed against them, internally, as we hurtled down the Mall, grumbling to myself that the protective cover was actually a ‘purdah', or shroud, cunningly designed by (mostly male) people in authority to prevent the female form from exposing herself to the public.
But Jaffer is speaking to me. "Sab siyasatdaanons ko goli se ura dena chahiye," he rails. All politicians should be shot. He grumbles that although he earns between four and five hundred Pakistani rupees a day (about 250-300 Indian rupees), he and his family can barely survive. Flour costs Rs 25 a kilo, cooking oil Rs 150 and rice has gone up by three times. Although he voted for Nawaz Sharif (and therefore against the pro-Musharraf party of PML(Q), life has only become tougher under the new government.
By now we have reached the Badshahi mosque, built by Aurangzeb in 1673. Unlike the extravagant lines of Shah Jahan's Red Fort in Delhi, the Lahore monument reflects the austere character of the later emperor. The southern wall faces the complex in which Maharaja Ranjit Singh's tomb is located.
Outside the mosque-tomb complex, a hawker from whom I have just bought a Sindhi mirror-work cap asks me how I speak such good Urdu. I tell him I'm from Delhi. "Oh, that's alright then," he answers, "you're one of us." He insists upon buying me a soft drink of my choice.
Lahore may be hot, dusty and grimy, but it has a big, big heart.