Sky with diamonds

I WOULDN’T have minded being in Lahore this weekend past. At around this time of the year it really earns its a.k.a., the city of gardens.

With the promise of spring in the air and a lifting of the winter smog that has so plagued it over the last decade or more, the place positively blooms.

I’ve never in Pakistan seen a city so brimming with flowers as Lahore, except for perhaps Islamabad, but the latter doesn’t have the additional grace bestowed by a long and illustrious history, reflected in its architecture.

But then, perhaps to have been in Lahore — rhapsody though it may be — at this time of the year would have been to yet again pull the scab off a wound that refuses to heal. It may sound melodramatic to put it this way, but I believe that few Lahoris would disagree.

Also read: Basant banished & banned

You see, the second weekend of February is when Basant used to be held. The festival is a centuries-old tradition of heralding spring by taking to the roads and rooftops and flying kites, basking in the (hopefully) by now warm sunshine and enjoying the season’s last good oranges. It has always been celebrated, to a greater or a lesser degree. It didn’t bother anyone, and if the city’s garbage collectors had a bit of a mess the next morning, no one minded for it was good, clean fun.

But then, Basant grew too big for its boots — at least, in a few decision-makers’ opinion. The elites caught on, more importantly the corporates caught on, and for several years, Basant became a day and a night when the entire city spilled out on the roads to have a party.

By the last years of the dying millennium, the city would attract thousands of visitors on Basant weekend; you had to book a bus or plane ticket well in advance to make sure you’d have a seat.

And everyone benefited: the hotels and restaurants and caterers, the companies that rent out chairs and tables and music equipment, the tailors that stitched clothes in basanti colours for women at all tiers of society, and most importantly, the craftsmen who made kites and string, a skill that has in those families been handed down through the generations.

And what a party it was. The city resonated with music, the air was filled by a million fluttering kites — the convention developed that at night, everyone flew white kites that cavorted and twinkled in the floodlit sky.

Every rooftop in especially the older parts of the city — which is to say, generally east of the Canal — but by no means limited to this would be filled to capacity, the people decked out in orange, yellow and green.

It was an egalitarian festival: the class-divide that so mars Punjabi society would for a brief while become blurred because of the manner in which people of all classes engaged with each other, and there can be few equalisers more potent than a Land Cruiser-wallah having his kite downed by a barefoot urchin.

But of course, there is the dark underbelly, and in this case it was the glass-and-chemical-coated kite string that was developed to make it less susceptible to being cut through by another string, thus sharpening the thrill of the competition for kite-fliers. It caused horrifying accidents: many people had their throats cut and died; many were grievously injured.

This could go on no longer, said the authorities, pointing out that in addition to these accidents there were the cases every year when children fell from their perch on some high parapet and died, and that in any case the mess created put far too much pressure on garbage collection facilities.

These were the reasons the authorities gave. The tell, though, was the resentful little voices that had been grumbling for some time: Basant was obscenity; it wasn’t Islamic.

This, I believe, was the underpinning reason the plug was pulled on Basant. Had it been otherwise, the city/provincial government would have done much more than it did to control the production and sale of the offending string (other than simply banning it, which means nothing), a task that is really not insurmountably difficult.

Basant had to go because Basant gave people a) ownership of the city, b) a chance to enjoy themselves and, going on from this last, c) a chance to enjoy themselves through cultural activity invested in the land, and not in the religion.

So now, around this time of the year, pictures and reports filter in of the police having nabbed a serious lawbreaker — yes, flying a kite is an arrestable offence there. Any possibility of reviving the festival seems far-fetched.

Nevertheless, one can’t help but mourn for a time when Pakistan had it in it to take the time to go fly a kite — it does so feel like whimsy, now.

The writer is a member of staff.

hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2015