Daily Times

We all know that man has always wanted to fly, from mythical Icarus whose waxed wings melted in the sun to modern day man. The pleasure of flight and the exploration of new places associated with it continue to date. I do think flight is just a tiny part of man’s desire to expand his reach. The fascination of peering into a telescope to view the universe or to view a microscope to see unseen creatures, anything that can extend the reach of our senses attracts us.

Sports like golf are addictive in a similar vein. The ability to hit that ball out to long distances signifies your conquest of that space, and that tiny dimpled ball acts as a proxy to you.That an exceptional stroke calls for meticulous skill and execution adds to this fulfilment. So anything that lifts us beyond the everyday, the mundane, is of course desirable.

Even my grandmother’s stories of the child of djinn living in my great-grandfather’s house elongating his arm to pick a distant glass of water is just a manifestation of our desire to grasp beyond our usual reach. And so it is with kites, and with basant (festival of kites).

Those colourful contraptions of paper and bamboo rising in the air on thin strings lift with them your mind and your soul. Rising high or flitting low, they give you freedom from earth and that Newtonian horror called gravity. The flight of a patang (kite) defies logic; I refer here to that more complex ovoid and semi-ovoid kite as opposed to the rectangular guddi/guddah (kite). I’m certain if scientists are invited to study patang aerodynamics they would declare it physically impossible, just like they did the bumblebee. Yet they both fly.

It is amazing how slender sticks and colourful, patched paper can hold so much happiness. And basant was, of course, the culmination of this happiness over a wondrous fun-filled weekend in spring. The weather, the music, the people, the kites…it was glorious. Over the years basant had grown from a cult event celebrated by kite flyers to a massive social event larger than any other festival in Lahore. People flew in from Karachi and even overseas, hotels were booked to the brim and even corporations wanted in on the action, sponsoring events and printing logos on kites. And, of course, shops selling yellow dresses for women did a roaring business.

The use of searchlights became increasingly common, extending the flying to night hours. The events organised by the late Mansoor Khan at his Syed Bhais’ factory on Ferozepur Road and by Yousaf Saluhuddin at his Haveli in Lahore were must-attend events, but we still gravitated to the houses of the Newage Cables’ owners in Model Town because there was more real kite flying here than at the other places.

There were celebrations at every hotel, at every home and the mood was festive. Something that we have not seen since. For those who considered themselves ‘purists’ in the art of kite flying all this was crass commercialisation of their beloved sport so they resisted initially, but the sheer momentum of that singing, dancing, laughing mass of humanity swept them along, and they joined in the merriment, singing and dancing with the rest.

One year, we had some business associates from Sweden in town for meetings, and since it was Basant we took them along. I handed them the dor (flying string) to a kite, and gave them a quick lesson on patangbazi (kite-flying). They were hooked in an instant. One comment was quite descriptively apt: “This is like playing a video game, but for real!” On the flight back to Stockholm they carefully hand-carried a few fragile kites to hang on the walls of their living rooms just to relive the joy of that experience.

While we killed that joy for ourselves. Just like we killed countless others. We have had far too many joyless springs, too many colourless basants. Too many children growing up without experiencing the ‘tan’ (stretch) of the dor as it sings in the breeze with the sun beating down on their faces. For when you are one with a ‘sudh’ (perfect) patang you don’t fly it, it flies you. High above the land. On its paper wings.

The writer is chairman of a Hedge Fund, and can be reached at muqtaza@gmail.com