Someone sent a picture of a kite on WhatsApp and my mind instantly wandered off to those giddy days of kite flying…so long ago. Preparations began a few days before the actual event. The intense planning to get the best possible “manjha” or sharp string , enough kites of all sizes( accompanied by some parental rebuke on the spending!) planning for an assistant to hold the “chakri” or roll of strings, the best location for an aerial advantage and to avoid the high tension wires!
Getting an early start before the already blazing January sun could glow in its full might was crucial! The sky would soon be dotted with hundreds of kites of all colors, and designs (each with its own unique name!). The duels to cut an opponent’s string, separating the kite from its owner seemed like almost an art! The air reverberating with blaring music and cries of the victorious would tune in and out with the changing direction of the wind. By late afternoon the landscape seemed to be dotted with kids running after falling kites, kites stuck in corners of rooftops, transmission wires and trees. The lucky few of these kites would find new owners ready to begin a new round of flight and possibly battle! As I gazed at the vast blue sky I could see kites, some flying away several hundreds of feet high up in the sky. Now unbound from the strings once held by their kite fighters, they floated away. Some, not more than little colored specks as they seemed to dance away into the stratosphere. I wondered as I gazed at them: where would they land? Would they fly again?
In some ways I imagine myself as one of the kites. So far away from home with only memories of the sky where I once flew. Those memories at times blurred by the vagaries of time. On this occasion of Sankranti those memories once again quicken the heart beat and bring a smile to my lips. Then again maybe its about the flight of the kite, and not about the skies it should fly into!
Anand's Thoughts 