Tomorrow Kolkata will be dyed with colour. No.Not its roads, like Holi. But its sky. Red,blue, white,black,pink…so many colours; known and unknown. Rooftops will be crowded. Spool in hand, string curved up the sky, attached to a kite: the age(s)-old image of a kite-flier.
When kites fly in the sky, can kite-fights be far behind? No. Never. Thuri re… lore nakko….Bagbajare keu nai —these are some war-cries which only a kite flier can understand. If he is a pacifist, he will behave as if he has heard nothing! And he will pull his kite away from the trajectory which the challenger kite flies in. But if he is a war monger, he will readily accept the invitation to fight and pull his kite in the path of challenger. It is an open dare flung. One challenger has to leave. The result is a furious darting of both kites, invading each other’s air space. Against the backdrop of a scorcher from a Bhaadro (September) sun. And militant rustling of kite papers.
One kite will be cut. Boys will run after it. Through the snarling traffic, getting past staggering buses plying panting, coming in the way of NO REFUSAL taxis in their unforgiving run, undermining toy-tranish trams tramelling, speeding across private buses locked in their daily deathly competing with each other, boys will give a chase to the cut-off kite that will ensnare them like the proverbial Piper of Hamelin. Boys are armed with loga — a long stick capped with thorny branches of a tree. These thorns help catching the string of the kite.
Arrep….arrep — another rhetoric in the kite lexicon, suggesting one logawallah has got rid of the cut kite among the scores of other logawallahs. So a victory. And victory means possession. Meanwhile another kite will be seen going in different direction. Boys are again up on their feet. They will give it a wild chase. Again another lucky catcher. And another lucky possession.
Sun will drop. Possessions will be accumulated. Then it will be time to go back home for a simple reason. The darkness arrives.