An Artsy Kite

Tonight I had seen a kite in my plaintive dreams. A kite made of newspaper cuttings, very artsy you know, like the ones they make to design a cultural fiesta-the kind of kites that do not fly.

I call them the sad kites, for a kite should fly and flutter, up and away in the blue sky. How limited are those artsy kites in their fashion school!

In my child hood we had made a similar kite, me and my brother you know.But secretly we had desired it to fly, so we had whispered the magic words of our secret book for it- so that it would fly and flutter, up and away in the blue sky.  Our life revolved around magic. There was so much magic everywhere.

 So in the pursuit of our artsy kite, I had gathered our neighbours’ newspaper cuttings. Our neighbour was a far-right politician, who collected only his party approved newspapers and was always gifting it to everyone to read. Since my mind was fresh and young as he boastfully mentioned, I was given many to read and from there my brother had cut out equal lengths of rectangular pieces, later only to be reshape it into an oblong fashion. He was the architect you see. I also gathered, withered broom-sticks to map out the backbone, and my withered memory does not remember much else, but the swift hand movements of my kid-brother who I swear could make Rome in a day, if he ever wanted to.

But I remember the kite, it was the same I saw tonight, two-feet by three-feet, braving the newspaper cuttings of a party news, and the cliched gold-promises for a bulletproof future. 

An artsy kite, you know. 

A kite that even after so much magic words and magic winds would get stuck in the single gigantic Pine tree-that had grown in our tropical city. 

A kite that was so dear to my brother-that he had climbed seven floors just to reach the top of the tree, and who in the helm of his adventure had stepped on a dead branch, and encountered a fatal fall.

This was the kite I saw tonight you know. An artsy kite- my brother made and died for.

While his funeral had passed and been forgotten in an instant, the kite had remained stuck in that pine tree. Soon there were critics that had blamed the mischievous kid himself who had dared to climb the cursed tree, and there were television-programs on how to tackle rowdy kids, others had blamed me, for being his comrade and letting him carry on with this meticulous suicidal act, my mother had blamed my father for not buying us regular kites, and there were all the ensuing bitterness and blame game that one associates with an un-natural death.

‘There is no magic left in this world’, in a state of utter shock and bitterness, I had declared. So I had decided to burn the magic book.  

But it won’t burn proving to me that magic did exist then, so why did not the kite fly? Why did kid brother have to die?

The religious activists were my sympathizers and with my help they had started the anti-pine movement so as to cut down the pine tree which was a bad omen, in a tropical city, according to the chief. After a long-lasting battle with the biologists they were successful in getting the permission to cut it down, but a pine tree in a tropical city is no ordinary tree, it had trembled its roots and had drove anyone who had tried to accost it.It had made me think again that magic was everywhere around me, then why did not the kite fly? Why did the branches not swing and rescue my kid brother? They had tried to burn it too afterwards but it had rained every-time, and so the pine had stood still darkened through time, flaunting our artsy kite, nurturing the ancient memory of my dead brother.

 Years later while attending a University lecture of an eminent philosophy professor I had come to realize that while the charm of magic laid in hiding the truth, never revealing it, lie corrupted magic. And then I remembered our kite was made of newspaper cuttings. 

An artsy kite.