Kite

The smell of cardamon out of my Mamu's freshly prepared traditional Nepali tea always woke me up each morning. My mother decorated our dining table that day with freshly fried Shel-roti, Patre and other sorts of sweets as Dashain and Tihar(Traditional Nepali Festivals) were just corridors away. I went out to the balcony of our old house, where I closed my eyes and took a deep breath through my nostrils into my lungs, that smell ,I can never compare it with any other smells in the world, the smell of being home. The sun played hide and seek behind those trees and norished me with its warmth through those tiny spaces between the branches.I could see shoemakers,bottle collectors & vegetable venders on the street carrying their day to day job everywhere around the town, making their living and fighting for their survival amongst the fittest. My eyes could photograph everything. Our eyes are actually better than a camera. Easy to take a photograph through it and even easier to save it forever in your brain.

My Father was always fascinated by flying objects. I remember me and my father staying late in the evening at the Airport and looking at all those different kinds of Airplanes flying around. He could even tell the model of each and every Boeing , quite fascinating though . My father loved his motorbike. The Honda Model of CD100, he loved more than anything else, which accompanied him and my mother on its back,every other weekend to the Hills and Parks around the valley. Old fellas always loved adventures.

Bua( Father) took me and my sister Anima to Ashan Bazar ( Pretty crowded center of Kathmandu) that day with me sitting in front on the Fuel tank of his motorbike and my sister Anima on his back. Mamu made a huge shopping list that covered everything from Vegetables, Fresh meat to the things that Krishna and Shiva(Gods) needed to get satisfied. We finished shopping our list. Bua saw in our face that we both were pretty much starving. He took us to the nearby Shop where we got Jery-swari to eat.

Bua loved kites. Kathmandu sky covered with fighting kites always made it a battle field. Bua planned that whole weekend we were going to fly kites and go on a weaponless war in the sky. He bought a special kind of a string that tailors used , usually to sew a mattress. He bought sabudana ( rice look alike stuff) which gave a sticky glue when cooked. When we came home,my mother was ready to serve her delicious food placed on the table.After our lunch, it was time to hit the sky.

But before that Bua gathered some old glasses around our home, crushed it and made a powder out of it, giving it a sugary look. Its pretty insane when I say it right now but he collected some grass snails from our garden too as it gave extra slippery liquid, when cooked.My mother wouldn’t let him harm the insects so we did it secretly on the garden, and cooked it in a pot on which we used to feed our dog(the only dog we had, which later bit me and escaped). We cooked sabudana, snail and glass together until it was ready to be applied to the string. Then flew my dad the kite and my job was to apply the mixture to the string, so that wind dried the amalgam in the sky.

We were already fierce fighters from the very beginning. We defeated about three or four kites from the start. I was so excited that every time my father won the kite battle ,I used to shout with joy so that my neighbors could hear that my father defeated the opponent. I could imagine the feeling of a soldier winning a battle for his country, not caring about the personal desire, love or even life, but it was same feeling for me, as a boy winning a kite battle. There were kites everywhere, the kites that lost the battle flew slowly down to the earth, where kids gathered around to get it . There were sometimes battle amongst the kids to get the kite, I got into a lot of kite troubles as well, which my mother hated. I used to get beaten by my mother with a rubber pipe that was used for watering the flower and trust me it hurts .

I remember that for going to the top of our house, there was never a ladder. Bua used to climb up and ask my mother to pass me from bottom so that he could drag me to the top. It was pretty risky though , a small failure could have lead me or him into a serious accident but he was confident. We flew kite all day long until we finally lost. My face got all red and the feeling of sadness pinched my heart.

It was already evening in Kathmandu with cold south wind blowing right through us. My mother came below asking my dad to pass me to her, with her lovely milliondollar smile. She put me a sweater and took me inside. Somewhere around in the neighbourhood i could hear evening bell ringing.. like every other evening..