Pa

The checked-shirt hung loose over his body, clinging to the shoulder bulbs as he bent down to pierce four little holes in the kite. Two towards the upper frame and two towards the tail. A little boy behind him looked over his shoulders, playing with the tip of the thread hanging from the lataai, the wooden-roll carrying the thread.  

‘Amu, maanjha’, the old man said, tying the final knot on the soft white thread. Picking at the knot, he now formed a triangle with the thread and kite to check the balance. Perfect! He tied another knot at the apex of his triangle. The third! The hands firm, betraying his sixty-some years. He has always believed that he has seen what many do not see in their lifetime. He regretted this though.

He always tied three knots. ‘People say three is not good, Papa. I don’t want to fall for them’, the boy would say.

Meanwhile, he broke a little piece of the maanjha and held it for a second. Almost in a prayer. The hands were shivering a little as he now tied the maanjha from the roll to the kite. And looked at his playground above.

A little smile was playing around the child’s lips. Joy trying to find a face. It appeared.

Holding the kite across his face, Ameya jumped his bright-little-jump and the kite flew for the sky. The black kite with little circle of red in the centre went up. And up. Far from Ameya’s hands’s reach, into the sky, unlike his paper-kites that usually hovered above the ant’s head. His Baba holding the thread, he held lataai.

‘Baba.’

‘Come, Amu.’

Amu felt the weight of the kite. A sweet red has appeared in his little palm. Profuse smiling had leaked red on his creamy cheeks.

‘Lo, Baba!’, and he ran towards the stairs.

Ma, Ma, Ma….echoes pouring out from the stairway.  

*

Ameya wiped at the sides of the lips of his grandfather.

‘Chacha, just when we started, a lost kite came our way. Baba caught it with our thread mid-air.’, Amu recounting bits of the day.

‘So did you learn something as well, Amu?’, mother left Ameya wondering.

‘Hmm. Thoda sa!’, Ameya hesitantly answered looking at Baba.

‘There was one peacock-kite, Sheenu’, Amu whispered to his little cousin sister who was looking at Baba’s fingers. Cut marks strewn on the fingers. Baba was finding it difficult to hold the morsels. Often something stuck to the sides of the lips. Ameya and Sheenu would smile at Baba. And Baba would wipe the sides and would return to his little angels his ever beautiful smile.  

‘Ma, did Pa know kite-flying?’, Ameya broke the silence.

*

‘Mamaji, do you know how to fly it?’ asked the frustrated little Anjan.

Mamaji, over his huge paunch, smiled and looked at the kite. ‘Nahi beta.’

‘No one with even a single drop of blood of ours has ever held a thread of a flying kite.’ And with this spewed a laughter. Anjan crushed his anger. Krishna smiled along with the Mamaji albeit helplessly.   

Anjan dropped the lataai on the floor and stood near the iron ladder. Afraid to climb it down alone, he just looked down, away from them, muttering to himself, ‘No one knows it. No one in my family!’

Years later, when in high school, he found a lost kite. He kept the kite with maanjha for the next day when fewer people will fly kites. He went up the ladder next day. Alone.

Two hours later, he was sitting on the platform between the water tanks. Above, a tiny little orange spot dotted the sky. That spot kept getting smaller. His kite was cut.

But he knew how to fly it, now.

Every year after that, Anjan would fly kites. Krishna would often come to the terrace when he flew them. He would look at Anjan, moving his hands rapidly sometimes, sometimes just letting the thread go. Anjan would have kept a brick on the lataai at a particular angle for the thread to come out when the kite needed it. When Pa was around, Anjan would ask him to hold it for him sometimes. Mostly when he wanted to strike another kite. And Krishna would prevent the thread from mingling, wrapping the thread whenever it pooled on the ground, helping his son. He would feel an arc of pride inside him seeing his son do the tricks in the sky.

Why three knots always, Anjan?

People say three is not good, Papa. I don’t want to fall for them.

A fiery nineteen-year old mind, he thought. An arc shone over his lips.

*

The well-built man laid on the white bed.

Anjan Pandey, 28 read the note-pad hanging from the bed.

Krishna stood, slowly went past the lobby. The tremble in his legs would not leave him. He still went ahead. Neurological department, Operation theatre I, Operation theatre II. Through the huge atrium, where people slept now, hours after the midnight, waiting. Waiting for something or the other. Past the huge revolving door, out of the hospital. He wished the tremble in legs was only because of the cold. He knew but how wrong he was, tonight.

He sat on a pipe that ran along the footpath. He stared blankly at the road. The vapours from the glass of chai rising unwittingly. Like memories in the mind.

 

Beta, hold my hand. Yes. Now walk. The foot should be round, see.

The mother, adeptly holding her affection behind her precisely arched lips, looked at them as the father helped the child walk on the pipe.

Krishna, it is ok! The time does bend and straighten things on its will when it has to, no?

He felt the cold metallic pipe under his palm.

*

‘And Amu, where is the lataai?’, Ma asked as she put the mosquito coil in his room.

We lost it, Ma. Baba was holding the thread then. We were up in the sky. We had cut so many kites. There was no one near us, Ma. I had asked him then, “who taught you, Baba?” He did not answer, Ma. The thread left his hands and the lataai tripped the brick and it went away into the air. So quickly.

Oh.

Ma, who taught kite-flying to Baba?

Pa Baba says, Amu.