WHAT teases the mind most is Americans’ love of life when summer comes. They suddenly turn into a new leaf. What triggers it on? Something in the sun? The long languorous daylight? Maybe the lush green grass and the leafy trees or the posies in their psychedelic burst? Perhaps the baring of their physique? Or is it simply summertime — the magic moment? It’s a bit of everything.

Tattoos in places where the observer’s eye would fear to tread and navel rings where once where was a belly button are all the rage. As a Pakistani, I feel an outsider, sitting on the sidelines viewing the summer carnival pass me by. For I am unable to relate. I am unable to partake of the celebration of life. It leaves me cold.

Not that I am immune to Nature’s glory abundantly showered all around; not that the splendour in the grass misses my eye; not that the rambling red roses creeping along a wooden fence fail to impress, nor the heavenly honeysuckle draw out my indifference to the sweetest smell I’ve ever known. What then is the problem?

Summer in Pakistan is another story. Dust storms, downpours, heat waves, water scarcity, power cuts, power outages, prickly heat, suffocation, sleepless nights, sun burns, tepid drinking water, mosquitoes, lizards — the list is endless.

Bluntly put, is green envy then the sum of my alienation to the summer fiesta that I unwillingly find myself pulled into? Is it a mutiny on the bounty? Can be?

Indeed, Nature’s bounty tilts heavy this side of the Atlantic. The Americans know it only too well. Naught for nothing do they call themselves the world! When they play baseball amongst themselves, they call it the ‘World Series’; when they play football with each other, they call it the world’s ‘Super Bowl’. Whatever.

Another idea to cross my torn thoughts is their monumental capacity for enjoyment. Jealousy aside (why they are blessed with a better deal than us), I never cease to wonder why we, as Pakistanis, lack the ability to let our hair down and simply enjoy the moment. Savour it. Our fun of life, its celebration, is diametrically different to theirs or is my mind set of having missed the bus with the prospect of a walk-through, over-the- hill-down-nowhere making me miss the wood for the trees? Generation X back home can pretty darn well turn around and say: “Speak for yourself”! I wish that’s the case and that their life in Pakistan is equally heady.

If so, then here’s to an American beauty, the summer sonata. Lost in a whirlpool of fruity colours — strawberry and cream; cantaloupe green and watermelon red; ice candy pink and blueberry violet, the stores here are swath in summer wear with the motto: less is better. Naturally, the tanning salons dotted all around turn out the swankest set of legs, arms and what-have-you! Men and women, with their golden tans and brawny bodies, step out looking like Grecian gods and goddesses of love and beauty, lighting up loopy love and wedding wows galore. Such is the summer’s sparkle.

Hedonism is at its height. Summer and the City throws up quick-fixes that give you an instant make-over! The face that launched a thousand ships is now mass produced where 7.4 million Helens of America coughed up $7.4 billion to generously substitute the lack of God-given facial and bodily endowments.

Plastic surgeons have their scalpels moving at a lightning speed of 476 per cent faster for breast augmentation, 386 per cent quicker in liposuctions and 190 per cent higher in eyelid surgeries, since the American Society of Plastic Surgeons started keeping a track of beauty-hunters a decade ago.

For some, who must sport their mortal wares when summer comes and also have the perfect clothes to match the exhibit, but not the money to suck out the sag, can now happily sign on to a grand loan scheme where your personal plastic surgeon (already a whopping millionaire!) gives you a rain cheque! Get the procedure done and pay later. That’s the American way. Wow!

Last week, the media broke into hives over the Botox injection — the miracle potion that wipes out ugly wrinkles in a blink of an eye! Called a ‘facelift in a bottle’, word of mouth among women is bolstering its sales. “Although high-glam places like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami took to Botox early on,” Allergan’s (the manufacturers) claim that their target audience of 5.5 million “aesthetically oriented people” (essentially, prosperous middle-aged women who have already visited a dermatologist). They have used Botox for wrinkles and now they want to spread their grubby dragnet to the suburbs of America.

Suburbia is a story with quite its own fairy tale trimmings: earthiness being supreme, summer is a non-stop kaleidoscope of action-packed pampering and oodles of funky sun-spattered fun. Life for ‘burbian moms’ and their brats is one long phantasmagoria — a kickoff with a binge at fast food outlet before heading for the air-conditioned malls and winding up at the pool to chill out until it’s time for bed.

Sounds cool?

Weekends are even more action-flushed. Beefy barbecue where mom sets out the red and white check table cloth with matching paper napkins, plates, glasses and disposable flat ware. Dad fires up the grill and gets down to real manly stuff of sizzling the two-pounder stakes for friends and family to feast.

Walking down New York’s fashion-filled avenues, were you to look down, all you’d see would be bare feet in open high-heels with beautifully manicured toes and heavy fragrance hanging all around. A woman whose perfume has a mystique all of its own tells me: “I learned this trick in Paris,” she says, when I go ga ga over her scent, “the Parisians always mix their perfumes, use two together. But beware, some combinations clash badly while others just fit divinely.”

Summer nights in Manhattan mean the opera, dance and music. The cocktail circuits come alive and the socialites flit like butterflies from one event to another. Even MTV pop princess, 20-year-old Britney Spears of “Oops I did it again!” — whom Forbes magazine crowned the world’s most powerful celebrity recently (dethroning movie star Tom Cruise) — has opened a restaurant called Nyla on East 41st Street. She joins the ranks of America’s heartthrobs Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone moonlight with food as a side business.

Romance of life has no age barriers. While the young with their golden streaks and luscious tans look lovely, women of all shades, shapes and sizes dress to the hilt. My neighbour’s middle-aged daughter a.k.a. a baby boomer arrived in her convertible sports car, raven black hair piled up on the crown, wearing the flimsiest of high-heels with open toes and tattooed legs, dangling silver anklets and huge silver hoops around her ears. Her height: just over 4 ft; her weight: tons of it judging by the layers; her abandon for life: unquantifiable!

The super rich — investment bankers, film stars, designers, artists, media magnates and even well-heeled journalists — have summer homes in exotic places like the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard on the east coast. Fun-centric families migrate for weeks at an end to party on the private beaches, glistening under a bright sun and nocturnal starry skies. Life is one big ball