THE words Basant and bahaar were inseparable till 2007. Basant bahaar then became bahaar, bereft of the million coloured kites dotting springtime skies. Our skies are now azure, albeit of still a troubled shade, not a calm one. As colour faded from the lives of people in this country, it seems strangely reflective that the only non-religious festival uniting Lahoris of all faiths also ground to a halt. The reason, of course, was that the Punjab government decided to resort to banning Basant entirely in order to curb the unfortunate deaths occurring resultantly each year. Kite-string of a lethal kind being the culprit.

Now, it’s been a good eight years that Basant has been relegated to memory. Fading fast. We will, indeed forget. We will forget that the Basant of our generation was the evolution of a festival thousands of years old, that the beginnings of the festival had nothing to do with kite-flying at all, really. So should we have another Basant, then? Another kind of Basant, in which we go back a little, to having kite-flying only with basic, harmless dorr, the kind that does not lead to fatalities. But then, that being not possible I suppose, for government authorities to monitor, it is easier to simply cut the cord. Will we get our Basant back in the near future, or even not-so-near future, wonder many, come this time of the year? This time of the year that used to have February Basants.

Also read: Basant banished & banned

I remember them. In the late 1980s, Basant was mostly a cutesy, walled-city-folk kind of affair. I, being fortunate enough to have grandparents living in the walled city back then, remember those Basants — they were really about kite-flying. There was the in-house mandatory cousin who spent pre-Basant up on the rooftop honing his skill. My more daring younger sibling would brave the bamboo ladder up to the highest level, while I mostly stood below, too afraid of heights. But the few times I ventured up, the world was a beautiful sight from there — Lahore was a vista, unfolding to the farthest stretches of the horizon. There crept in night Basant then, and it was clear that this was the fun part of the show. We stopped visiting in the daytime for Basant then, the evening prior being more colourful and festive. A loudspeaker or two would be stationed at every kite-flier’s rooftop, the music intermittently broken by the essential “bo-kaata” war cry. There were fierce, enthusiastic kite-flying competitions; these could take on an intense hue if neighbourhood tiffs were involved.

By the late 1990s, Basant was a modernised, hip ballgame. Havelis (including those that didn’t quite qualify as) in the walled city were rented out for the weekend; the corporates had stepped in. Everyone wanted a whiff of walled city culture for a day. Basant became one of the save-the-dates on the society calendar. It was all about partying the night and day away. Food, couture and revelry mingled to the drift of barbeque smoke. Music blared from sophisticated systems, and the dhol-wallahs had a field day too. Twenty-something Sara Rafey recalls “hopping from rooftop-party to haveli-do,” each year on the eve of Basant.

This was not the way we were, though, if you step a little farther back in time. Those living in the walled city in the 1960s and 1970s will tell you about the time that “Basant was a simple affair”. Misbah Shafi, who is in her 60s, fondly recalls the Basants of her childhood, when she was “the only girl allowed up on the rooftop to fly kites”. Females weren’t really allowed to scale those heights, the rooftops being a male domain. “But I was indulged by my father,” she reminisces. The dhol-wallahs that she also mentions remained a constant through the decades — perhaps even more so than the art of kite-flying itself, which waned with the Basant-partygoers of the 1990s and beyond.

The harmless fun that was Basant started taking on an alarming hue, as competitiveness spiked, and with it resultant casualties ascribed to dangerous versions of dorr being more and more commonly used. It had all spun out of control for government intervention. The debate is still dragged out around this time every year in the media, about how things can be managed in a way as to reinstate Pakistan’s much-loved annual festival of kites. New solutions are proffered, old ones discussed. And then put away till next year. No loss of life is acceptable, yet arguments in favour of holding the festival without safety impositions are also made by enthusiasts of the sport.

The fields of sarson turn lush every year even now on cue, but the basanti colour that has inspired poets, artists and writers for generations remains restricted to the earth. Our Lahori skies remain colourless, year after year.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2015

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