nice to know, Well I am GOing on BAsant March 2006 this year. it will be nice i guess

dunno if machar wali kite has an english name

… and a very strong viewpoint of the clergy to denounce basant is … waste of time & money !

each year millions of money wasted on paper kites … (other then the lavish arrangements all over Lahore)

… many people … specially small boys from poor neighbourhood lost their lives … in number of accidents … but no one pay attention as it wasnt any of their own relative.

… it is just like … forgeting Gujrat Earthquake … but an event like Tsunami teh whole world knows !

It was a warm September afternoon with the humidity of a monsoon thatís over but doesnít know that yet. Classes had ended for the day and Angel and Sky walked hand in hand out across the shaggy green lawns, and through the gate, waving at me as they went. I looked down at the large wooden spindle in my hand, its edges rough and chipped where it had rolled over stones and grit. Its handles worn polished dark grimy smooth by spinning with wind-tugs while held snug in the webbings between the thumbs and forefingers of many an enthusiastic apprentice. Its bobbin wrapped around with the finest dirty white dora, a kilometre of it, no ground glass coating.

The kite itself was the largest I had found in all the alleys of MalkaGanj, its span almost as wide as the street in which the shop was, and its pink, which had caught a stray ray of the setting sun when I got there, as loud as a neon wedding. There were gold birds, which, impossibly, seemed embossed on the thin, taut paper. The man who made it had the cloudy beginnings of a cataract in one eye, and the shop wasnít high enough for him to stand upright in.

It was the most beautiful kite I ever flew.

Out on the beaten yellow grass of the playing field, a half dozen sluggish cricket matches slowly dwindled away as the kite rose. The air was still at ground-level, but as always when flying a kite, the wind seemed to be in my hair. The pull and pull and tug, weaving an invisible tapestry across the sky, and when it got high enough, the constant fight to break free. Then distance became academic, as all that held us together was a parabolic curve of string, taut as a tuned guitarís. I squinted up into the sun, and half a mile above a small dark diamond whirled, a dervish in a tight thermal.

Much later when she told me about that day, it was the kite that she started with. When Sky and her, after drinking soda from marble stoppered banta bottles, and sharing a nervous cigarette outside the college gates, had finally got onto a rickshaw and started towards VijayNagar, the kite had just, in a flapping, morose manner, risen above the college buildings. And when they kissed by the window of the second storey flat, generously donated by a friend, she could see the kite, a hundred feet in the air, the only one visible for miles.

- It was our first time with each other, she said, as she sat hugging her knees on the rug on the far side of the room, on the day after Skyís funeral. As my orgasm came closer it was no longer Skyís face with its peculiar concentration hanging over mine that I saw, but two kites. Two kites, violently twisting and jerking across the sky, their glass-edged strings snaking around each other, bound together and pulling apart, each trying to cut the other loose. And when it flowed, one kite was cut adrift, and floated, and pirouetted and tumbled and careened, blown by the wind, constantly seeming larger, but never losing altitude.

Towards sunset I slowly, reluctantly brought the kite down from a sky that had turned its exact shades of pink and gold. On the way to my room, I stopped for a habitual peek at the TV in the common room. And for the next half-hour, kept standing there. The crowd around the TV kept growing. One of my friends came in, sweaty from an evening run, and started yelling ëLong live the Revolutioní and pumping his arms in the air. All heads turned to look at him.

Then there was no thought in my head except that I had to tell Angel. I ran all the way to VijayNagar, the streets a swift grey blur of unremembered familiarity, people and cows just obstacles to be narrowly brushed past. Angel opened the door, wearing Skyís favourite faded T-shirt; through the door I could see him lying on the crumpled sheets on the camp bed, smoking a cigarette, angry.

- Two airliners have flown into the World Trade Centre buildings in New York. Thought youíd like to know.

Angel hugged me. Sky got up from bed and took a step towards us and stopped. There were tears flowing from my eyes and down onto his T-shirt.

At the moment when she had been closest to him, I had barged in. And he had to stop and look, from a distance. For it wasnít me barging in, come to think of it, it was the story. A story that ran through our lives and bound Angel and me together, a story to which he had been spectator before, and would be again. A story that had just outgrown the insignificant traumas of our unknown lives to become the mythology of the media.

That was why my tears flowed. Not for America, not for the Middle East, not for human life, not for New York. But for that now there would be no escape from the images of death falling from the sky on the unsuspecting. For the secret language of my nightmares had become the lingua franca of the world.

Thru my letter i would like to thank Aamir u r friend for educating u all about the kites in Indian Subcontinent.
When u are sitting on the net u ill get loads of sites both Personal and Commercial showcasing Kites from all our the world but none from Pakistan or India ( Home of Fighter Kites) .

Thru this letter of mine i would like to congratulate you on your endeavour . In case you are interested in some more pictures ,i can share with you so that this page of yours becomes more appealing and informative to all those who visit it.

My Best wishes.

A Kite Flier,
Gravs