<b>Geetanjali Krishna:</b> When one kite flies, another falls

The other day when I was out for a morning walk in the neighbourhood park, I saw a large bird had become entangled in the loops of a kite string. A sweeper who had found the bird was trying his level best to free it, but to no avail. Some other walkers and I tried to help, but didn’t know quite what to do. The bird, a black kite, died as we watched. The string was just too strong to break, and being glass-coated, was hard to handle too. All we could do was to stand by as the bird died a painful death. I gloomily continued with my walk. When I circled back to that spot on my second round,

I found that the sweeper was burying the kite in a shallow grave. “It’s so sad that this poor bird was killed because of the one activity that gave me so much joy in my childhood...”

The sweeper, Abdul, told me that when he grew up, the coming of the monsoons heralded the start of the kite-flying season. “All the boys were mad about kite-flying and would often bunk school for it,” he recounted. “As the season progressed, our lives would revolve around very competitive kite fights and like most other good kite fliers, I too had a lucky kite that had been undefeated in a number of contests.” It was for that lucky kite that Abdul first bought some glass-coated thread, manjha. “Although our parents had forbidden the use of this manjha as it was quite dangerous and could cut through skin like a knife, we illicitly flew our lucky kites with it during kite fights,” he said. “It was so strong that it cut through ordinary manjha in seconds.” What Abdul didn’t know at that time was that the same manjha could also slice off birds wings in mid-flight.

Abdul became aware of the dangers of using glass-coated manjha when he started working as a sweeper. At the beginning of the monsoon, when the kite-flying season would commence, he’d see birds, dead or injured by this manjha. His joyful childhood pastime swiftly lost its innocence and allure. Abdul realised that the use of glass-coated manjha had become even more popular now than it had been in his time.

However, when he tried to spread awareness about the pitfalls of using glass-coated manjha amongst the kite-crazy boys in his neighbourhood, he was met with disinterest, apathy and even ridicule. “The boys couldn’t care less about birds, all they cared about was their beloved kites,” said he. So many birds died every day, they said what was the big deal if a few died because of their hobby? Moreover, the boys argued that they couldn’t afford to lose their kites, for good kites weren’t cheap anymore. The glass-coated manjha was uncuttable, said another, why would they want to use a weaker thread and lose their contests? A third boy pointed out that Abdul must have himself used glass-coated thread in his youth — how could he be so hypocritical and ask them to stop using it now? One of them quoted the old saw about the cat who ate a hundred mice before going for Haj to seek absolution for all her sins, and they all laughed at Abdul.

Eventually, Abdul decided that since he could not prevent the use of glass-coated manjha, the least he could do was bury every dead bird he came across. “I know that I too must have inadvertently caused the deaths of many birds while flying kites,” said he. “This is my way of making amends.”