January 17, 2008

January 17, 2008

The breeze blows against my face, and, the tip of the nose feels the brunt of it more than other parts of the body. Touching the nose tip I feel the chill sitting there majestically, knowing very well no one can wrap it up with warmth. This sweet but restless breeze brings back memories. For me, sometimes I spend hours sitting all alone refreshing my past thoughts. Moreover, these flash backs are like multiplication tables. I can well hear snort from somewhere. “Silly, mixing up calculations with recollection”, is all that you can tell. Justifying my reason I can say, while making payments, my school maths tables come handy.

Let me get back to where I want to be. Those wonderful early days, never to return again, but what’s the harm in applying the reverse gear.

At this time of the year, Makar Sankranti is celebrated on the 15th of this month every year. The blue sky wears a patchy look. Patches of different colours adorn the vast blue stretch, hobnobbing in their own mood. This is a great day for kite flying, and, the kites high up there flirting with the wind seem to be in a happy mood. But the kite flyer has full control over it.

***

It was the boys who thought they had the right to fly kites. Never mind, we girls never gave up but joined their gang, and forcefully enrolled ourselves as a member of their team. Preparations went on for days for the final. Thread and the huge wooden reel to wrap up the thread were bought from our pocket money. A lot of labour went into making the thread strong enough to give a tough fight to other kite flyers. After gathering broken glass bottles, we crushed them to a course powder - a tough task and risky too. This course glass powder was cooked in flour paste. The next job was a tougher one. Two bamboo posts were made to stand apart. One person placed the cooked paste on a piece of cloth and another tied one end of the thread to one post and walked forward towards the another post. Following the person was the one who had the paste in his hands. The paste was used to give a covering to the thread to make it strong enough to slash the thread of other kite flyers. This process went on till the whole lot of thread was coated. The coated thread was left to dry in the sun throughout the day and before sunset the thread was rolled onto the wooden reel. Kites were bought from neighbourhood shops. Out on the terrace, everyone got a chance to fly kites and made sour faces when somebody else won in the kite fight. Losing a kite made us sad. When a kite, broken from its strings, swayed in the breeze and landed in our land, our joy knew no bounds. We spent hours on this game. Children in big cities never get a chance to enjoy this game. I feel these children have a lost childhood and parents focusing more on their future than let them enjoy their days of childish pranks. Childhood comes only once in life and will never return. My children can always tell their next generation about the lovely days they spent and enjoyed as children. Never deprive children their legitimate due. Am I wrong?

Thoughts of the past and the present are walking in the streets of my mind and I’ll be back again once I place them in words.