I divert my attention from Chennai to Lahore because of this article in today's Guardian:
Strings attached: Is a Pakistani kite flying ban purely in the interests of public safety, or are there hard-line religious reasons behind it?
It used to be only the Taliban who so opposed kite flying that they ordered it banned. The extremist mullahs who ruled Afghanistan believed the sight of skies filled with small, paper kites was somehow un-Islamic. On the day the Taliban finally fled Kabul, the kites returned to the skies of the Afghan capital as a symbol of celebration.
Now, to the astonishment of many, the ban has re-emerged in Lahore, the steamy, liberal, cultural heart of Pakistan. Last month, Mian Aamer Mahmood, the head of the city council, ordered a three-month ban on kite flying. Illegal kite flyers, he warned, faced prosecution. The skies above the city's large parks have been empty ever since.
Mr Mahmood's officials insisted the ban was motivated purely by concerns of safety. Kite flying in Pakistan is frequently more a competition than a hobby. Flyers pit their kites against each other in skilled attempts to cut their rival's strings. Bets are occasionally laid, and to gain advantage most flyers buy string which has been specially soaked in a ground-glass and occasionally ground-metal paste that hardens to make the string slice like a knife. Some even use wire strings.
But in the crowded streets of Lahore's old city, the kite strings are as much a liability as an entertainment. City officials say at least 45 people have died of kite-related injuries in the past six months. Many of them were young boys whose wire strings hit electrical power lines, causing short circuits. Occasionally motorcyclists are garrotted by fallen wire strings and dozens of kite flyers sustain serious cuts to their fingers. ...
Already savings are being made, they say. Short circuits caused frequent blackouts in Lahore's antiquated electrical supply and repairs would run to as much as £30,000 every weekend. ...
But others warn there may be a darker side to the decision. Kite flying in Lahore has commonly been associated with the spring festival of Basant, when the city is cloaked in saffron-yellow and crowded with parties, dancing and celebration.
Hard-line religious clerics have long railed against Basant, and the kite-flying that accompanies it, as un-Islamic. In a revealing statement presented to the courts in Lahore at the time of the kite ban, Khawaja Mohammad Afzal, the city's legal adviser, wrote: "The use of fire crackers, music and dance on such occasions is un-Islamic." ...
However, Mr Mahmood and his officials are likely to come to some form of eventual compromise over the kites, that allows the flying to continue but outlaws the dangerous wire and glass-coated strings. Few in Lahore will be ready to countenance Taliban-style rule in their city. (more)
This ambiguity about kite-flying in Lahore has been going on for a long time. Ambiguity in the sense that the people want it; some of the authorities, and conservative religious figures, don't.
Here's what my wonderful book on the culture of Lucknow before the British took it over in 1857, Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture has to say about kite-flying (there's more than this, but it's mostly technical terms and designs for different kinds of kites. And the chauvinistic author naturally claims that kite-flying was first developed in Lucknow):
At the commencement of the British period Khinch, the dragging-pulling style of kite-fighting, was established. It was really begun by small boys who had very little cord and would put their indigence to rights by recklessly cutting down other people's kites. In those days experts would look on them with contempt and keep their kites at a distance. But eventually this art became very popular in kite competitions and many experts sprang up. Today in Lucknow there are scores of people who have frittered away lakhs of rupees on this pursuit and have ruined themselves but have achieved prominence and have become honoured and revered in kite-flying circles.And here's my own experience of Basant, the Spring Festival, in the Old City of Lahore:
Someone had invited us to join his family's Basant celebration. When we arrived the men went straight to the roof, while the women were ushered into a little room full of the women of the family. Generations lived together in this house, packed in tight. The women were talking and watching a recent family wedding on video. We extricated ourselves in fifteen minutes, but the family women never appeared on the roof. They watched videos, prepared food, talked inside.
The houses in the old city were tightly crowded together, with almost no open space: the population density was about 500 per acre. Thousands of people stood on their flat roofs, flying kites or enjoying the air. Radios blasted out popular songs from films. Kites filled the sky like a shower of confetti. They were shaped like butterflies, in bright colours and patterns, and there were hundreds of them in the air all day long. People ate large meals, danced to the music, called across to their neighbours, four or five stories above the ground.
The kite-strings were coated with ground glass, and people duelled with them, trying to cut other people's kite strings with their own. Each family or group of friends bought many kites in the expectation that some of them would be felled. There was a lot of business of selecting a kite from the stack, attaching the string, making sure the string was correctly wound on the big wooden spools. The person flying the kite was closely observed, encouraged, advised. When a kite was victorious over another, its flying group cheered, and taunted the defeated ones.
I asked if I could fly one, and the young men of the family good-naturedly let me hold the string of a kite that was already aloft. I felt it tug against my hands -- and then it was cut. I watched it fall, and resigned from the field.
In the late afternoon the women carried up containers of food and laid them on a long table, and then retreated inside. We stood around the table, munching and watching the sky.
In the evening the trees were full of crumpled kites.
An article on kite flying in Pakistan, with pictures, including the one above.
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