In this northwestern hinterland of Pakistan it is springtime. The wide-open spaces of yesteryear have given way to unchecked urban sprawl. But one can still smell the faint fragrance of orange blossoms in the air. The end of winter and the start of an awfully long and suffocating summer is interrupted and accented by a rather brief but exhilarating and intoxicating spring.

Babur, the Mogul Emperor was charmed by the vistas near Peshawar when he camped there in 1508 on his way from Afghanistan to India. Like a painting as far as eye could see, he wrote in his memoirs, there were fields of flowers. In this chaotic jumble I call Peshawar, those fields of flowers are but a distant memory now. Like many other cities of Pakistan, Peshawar is bursting at the seams from over population, civic neglect and haphazard expansion. A mass of humanity- half million locals and three times as many refugees from the war-torn Afghanistan __ have outstripped whatever meagre civic amenities there were.

Traffic jams, pollution and a mad rush to get ahead has turned this once pristine frontier town into a scarred and chaotic mess. Bits and pieces of old Peshawar that the famous American traveller had called the Paris of Pathans can still be found but with some straining and some imagination.

I look at this city with rose-coloured glasses that are set in frames from the fifties. It helps me filter out things that do not fit and helps me see things that others tend to overlook. An early morning walk through the labyrinthine streets and alleys of the old walled city is one way to see the fast-disappearing slices of the old culture.

In some parts of the old city water carrier sprinkle the streets to settle the dust and then sweepers with long brooms sweep the streets.

A young child, a woman in veil or a man carrying a small child on the shoulder emerges from a shadowy street to buy breakfast items--fresh milk, malai and oven-fresh piping hot flat bread. The shepherds herd water buffaloes and cows through the brick-lined streets on their way to the pastures. An occasional mother stands outside the mosque with a sick infant at her hip in the fervent hope that the worshipers coming out after the dawn prayers would blow blessings on her child. Iqbal's poetry wafts over the neighbourhoods from radio and some music lover plays Lata on a record player, "Chore gai baalam, hai mujhe akela chore gai." A solitary hawker walks the streets with a wide big basket of fresh roses on his head calls, "suchei ghulabaan di bahar ai."

Inside the old chai khanas __ tea houses __ bearded men sit cross-legged on the floor eating bread and sipping a thick brew of milk tea. They could easily be characters from the poems of Rudyard Kipling or from an era when Dr. John Watson, the venerable Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame, recuperated here after receiving a bullet wound to his shoulder during the Afghan war of 1888. This could also be a scene from the realm of Avitabile, an Italian mercenary of the Waterloo fame, who ruled this city in the 1830s as the governor of the Sikh ruler of the Punjab. Every morning he would have a few locals hurled from atop of the minaret of the main mosque to "teach a lesson to the unruly tribesmen." Or they could be traders from Central Asia having their first meal of the day after spending the night in a nearby caravan sarai.

As the day advances, old culture and traditions, literally and figuratively, recede and give way to the mayhem of cellular phones, automobiles, traffic jams, noise and a perpetual haze of pollution. In this unfamiliar day-time city I have difficulty recognising familiar cultural references __ the soft lullabies sung in mother tongue, the folklore, the oral history learned in the lap of grand mothers __ that are the building blocks of a viable and enduring culture. Cable TV and dish antennas are expanding and setting new cultural boundaries and people are enchanted by it. They are willingly exchanging their old oil lamps for the new fanged one's just as in the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp.

To live here is to live with contradictions and contrasts. Ejaz Rahim, a perceptive and sensitive poet (and the health secretary in the federal government) draws, in this beautiful poem, a contrast between Jamrud, a dusty village in the foothills of the Khyber Pass and the lush green Cantonement of Peshawar, both part of the Peshawar landscape. My heart sprawls out like the environs of Peshawar, seen from the sky.

In portions, Jamrud brown, at places Cantonement green. The heart is a city of contrasts, Held together by a dream. Despite many changes, I hold on to my rose colored glasses, my old magic lamp and my dream.