So exhilarating was this experience of living in Islamabad for an entire jacaranda season and so crestfallen was I to learn that the jacaranda phenomenon lasted for just a month, that it inspired an entirely new wardrobe in purples and mauves so that I could enjoy the colour even after it was gone.

Alternating between journalism and development, has been the pattern in Sahar Ali’s 13-year career, her professional split personality clearly a Gemini trait. Ali is a media consultant for an American NGO. She balances a love of good food with a passion for exercise. She can whip up a mango salsa one minute and race up a steep trail, the next! Arriving in Islamabad to a cold and wet reception, Sahar Ali, soon finds herself being converted into a diehard fan of the scenic Pakistani capital.

If you are a Karachi-ite who’s moved to Islamabad, you’re something of a phenomenon in Pakist

an’s scenic capital. I relocated here more than six months ago but even now not a social event goes by without my having to answer that inevitable question which follows my confession of being from the vibrant and cosmopolitan southern port city and erstwhile capital.

"How do you like Islamabad?" is the inevitable inquiry.

‘Sunny side up’, I’m tempted to say, not knowing how to simplify into idle drawing room chatter, what is really a detailed and complex response.

But that would be facetious of me. Not to mention fallacious. Because one thing I love about Islamabad is the recurrent rain.

Yes, I’ll admit it in print. My Fair Lady’s Professor Higgins might have shown characteristic, oh-so-British restraint in declaring, ‘I’ve grown accustomed to the rain’. But I will put it in simple, no holds barred black-and-white: I love rain!

I arrived in Islamabad early this year, to a cold and wet reception. It had been raining since the day before, I was told, and it continued to rain for five days – incessantly. Although it depressed me a little at first, especially because it was so cold too and my Karachi winter wardrobe was grossly inadequate to shield me from the freezing temperatures of a city cupped in the Margalla hills, I couldn’t help being soon utterly fascinated by the fact that though it drizzled and poured by turns for the entire week there wasn’t a guzzling gutter or an inundated road in sight.

Rain isn’t Islamabad’s only natural wealth. There are assets aplenty in the plush (lush is not descriptive enough for the carpet-pile quality of grass here) greenery of the city, well preserved in the many green belts that cross-cut Islamabad’s various sectors. Every season has its own colour. Early spring has the delicate hues of apple blossoms deepening to the vibrancy and intensity of the jacaranda that canopies and carpets Islamabad in mauve for an entire month. So exhilarating was this experience of living in Islamabad for an entire jacaranda season and so crestfallen was I to learn that the jacaranda phenomenon lasted for just a month, that it inspired an entirely new wardrobe in purples and mauves so that I could enjoy the colour even after it was gone. When the jacaranda trees are beginning to revert to green for the rest of the year after their spring burst of colour, the laburnums start to bloom heralding the arrival of summer

The fact simply is, if there’s one city in Pakistan where a single woman can live alone and feel secure doing so, it is Islamabad. And perhaps that’s why I really have little to complain about. Islamabad has allowed me to have a place of my own and I am again reminded of My Fair Lady. Eliza Dolittle’s melodic dream of ...a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air, with one enormous chair is my reality.