The Lost Kite

I had written about my Sankrant memories in the previous post.

All along I was thinking of the bitter-sweet memories of my kite-flying partner who is no more. Even today, I was tempted to write about any other stuff except this, but that somehow feels wrong. He was a part of the best of my Sankrant memories.

Our kite-flying madness had got toned down once we reached high school. Both of us went to different cities for college. Then work and weddings happened. I moved out of Jaipur on a more permanent basis and never went back for Sankrant again.

I don’t remember which was the last year when we celebrated the festival together. Didn’t matter at that time when we always planned to go back for Sankrant ‘someday’. The ‘someday’ never came for logistical reasons and now we will never have the memory of flying kids with all the children together.

At that time, we didn’t realize that one day there would come a time when we would be so busy and so far away, that we would never scream and jump again over the joy of cutting the annoying neighbour’s kites. And that one day one of us will go before the others and never come back again.

I am glad for all the memories I have.

The days of complete childhood fun. Of getting sunburnt with chapped cheeks and blackened noses. Of the time when all three boys sulked because I lost a precious kite by insisting on ‘pech ladana’ instead of handing over my kite-I had to steal back that kite from the professional street-looteras to earn back my place on the roof. Memories of falling sick because of drinking chilled water every time we came down after being in the scorching sun, making complicated strategies to cut kites and then leaping over terrace walls to grab falling kites.

It would have been wonderful to have a handful of more memories. To remember more details of those far away days. To have had more time.

Since we’ll never get that again, all we can do now is be thankful for the moments we had, cherish the ones we have.