Perhaps it was the recent newspaper report (and pictures) of Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachan flying kites in Gujarat during a shoot and thoroughly enjoying himself that set off the nostalgic mood in the local enthusiasts of the pastime. But, more likely it was the sequence of golden days with crisp, clear blue skies and a cool breeze, the ideal ingredients of kite-flying, experienced in Lahore these past few days that brought home and intensified the feeling of loss at the continued absence of kite-flying and its annual festival of Basant.
So, it is that heart-wrenching time of year again, the all too short winter is at its loveliest and best and almost through, but no kites are flying, where once they coloured the city skies with their mad and marvellous dances and created a joyous carnival atmosphere in the city. The all-important ‘feel good’ factor. All tensions and worries evaporated in the wondrous activity. Now, with upturned face, one scans the skies for even a solitary exception flown by an intrepid soul ignoring the ban in vain. Only the lazily circling eagles, the black crows and the ‘homers’ flown by pigeon-fanciers are in evidence against the largely bleak expanse of sky.
This is also the period when the print and electronic media, no longer able to ignore the overwhelming public sentiment in favour of reviving Lahore’s premier cultural festival, pitches in with newspaper columns and television programmes on private channels, the latter almost all ending with a tremendous, if not emotional, endorsement by a majority of the participants. All this reflects the deep-rooted love of the Lahoris, lurking just below the surface, for this particular home grown sport, whose fame had spread far and wide, but which sadly remains a ‘terrorist’ activity on its home turf, inviting the immediate wrath of our not-so-finest, indeed, of the worse-than-beasts.
This charade or gimmick takes place every year in an almost mechanical manner, and it is no wonder that it left our matinee-show rulers sitting in their ivory towers unmoved towards a popular decision in the matter. One cannot but agree with the columnist who called for a movement to revive Basant, as individual voices have remained futile and unanswered. But given the present desperate straits and despair of the ordinary citizen, and the complete silence on the restoration of a ‘safety-valve’ entertainment, this course of action also appears on second thought to be merely a half-way measure.
On the safety of the sport there cannot be any two opinions. The debate over the unfortunate casualties and the definitely dangerous features that have crept in the once harmless sport over the years are too well-known to be recounted here. The cultural, cathartic and the ‘rain-maker’ (if that is the correct term) or the financial bonanza aspects of the festival are also universally accepted. That hundreds of thousands of poor people and traders have been rendered jobless and are facing starvation, knowing no other vocation, is a brutal fact also callously ignored.
Ultimately, it is up to the concerned authorities to regulate and legislate on the precautionary measures needed in a concerted and serious manner, instead of adopting the usual heads-in-the-sand posture and thinking the problem will go away. No, it will not, the Lahoris’ gut feeling about this festival remains, and will always remain, unequivocally pro-Basant. And this is despite whatever the motley band of the Defence of Pakistan Council and other fellow-travellers might think!
Mortality meanwhile continues to take its toll by other means. Buildings collapse, burying everyone in or under them, fatal road accidents happen daily, the gas cylinders used in public transport vehicles explode causing horrific deaths, hundreds died of the dreaded dengue last year and many more will be at its mercy in the coming summer season, make no mistake about it, and so far more than 150 heart patients have become victims of the corruption and incompetence enveloping our society. Such casualties are unthinkable in a score of Basants.
We are not fools, we are well aware that nothing comes cheap in our society, with the possible exception of human life. So, please do not make out a ‘nasty, brutish’ and volatile society to be either a Switzerland or one of the Scandinavian welfare states in the pious statements and sermons against the ‘evils’ of kite-flying. The reality of our lives is quite different.
As Hieronimo laments in Thomas Kyd’s ‘The Spanish Tragedy:
‘O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears!
O life, no life but lively form of death!
O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs!
Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds!’
And then, inevitably the sweet bard of Stratford-upon-Avon in ‘The Comedy of Errors’:
‘Sweet recreation barr’d, what doth ensue
But moody and dull melancholy,
Kinsmen to grim and comfortless despair,
And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?
In food, in sport and
life-preserving rest,
To be disturbed would mad or man or beast’.
Indeed, taking a leaf out of the Arab Spring, wherein every mass move of the organisers was pre-planned through the internet and social media (e-mail, Blackberry, Twitter, YouTube), the same device can be used to mobilise the millions of kite-flyers of the city, not on the squares (we only having the concentric circles of Hell) but on the rooftops: On this date, at such and such a time (synchronise your watches three times for absolute accuracy!) every kite-lover in Lahore will throw caution to the winds (literally) and defy the ban by flying kites over the length and breadth of the city simultaneously. That old baghi Javed Hashmi can be asked to be the first that ‘rears his hand’. Ouch! Take that, all you hypocrites and fakes! Perhaps this massive display, if nothing else, will drown out the platitudes of the self-righteous, the screeching of the Puritans and the lamentations of the sheer killjoys and force then to accept the truth for a change.
And finally, in the immortal words of the rickshaw-driver bard of Lahore, which sound better and come to much the same thing, Pappu Yar, Tang Na Kar! Let Basant happen this time, if only for a weekend.
Basant is no terrorism!
