nostalgia...

KITES

Smrithi Rumdali Rai

Four of us sprawled in the grass under the shade of the plum trees. Shekhar lazily spat out a plum seed and hit Suresh squarely on the back of his head. His head buried in his arms and lying on his stomach in the grass, Suresh took no notice.

With no adult around for the day except the old ‘cook uncle’ at home, we had gorged ourselves silly on the half ripe plums and were all feeling rather kindly towards our fellowmen.

White flecks of the occasional cloud dotted an otherwise clear blue sky.

‘Chet’…. ‘CHHHETTTTT! The lazy afternoon was punctured by this shrill cry followed by a victorious whoop.

It floated down gently….a green and yellow flutter of string and paper and stuck in the tall magnolia tree towards our right. The whoop rang out again as the kite just hung there limply.

‘There goes Shiva’s kite’ muttered Shekhar.

‘How do you know it is his, dada?’ I asked.

Shekhar, for an answer turned contemptuously away. He was fourteen and the biggest among us. I knew he was just letting me hang around because my mother had asked him to keep an eye on me. He knew everything about everything and would not waste his wisdom on an eight year old girl.

He and prodded Bivek in the ribs with his foot.

‘Aye ooth’ (get up)
“Huh.” Bivek sprang up in a hurry. He was never sure if the two brothers meant to hit him or be friends with him. But then Shekhar and Suresh were the very popular boys and being bullied once in a while was a small price to pay to be allowed to hang around them.

‘I am going to make a kite’ he announced.

Suresh immediately sat up. I squealed in delight but was silenced by a look. Bivek was smiling broadly.

“You go get the small bamboos from Kumar’s house’.

‘You, collect some dry twigs’.

‘And you try and see if you can sneak out some flour and a dekchi (container) from the kitchen with out that old cook seeing you”. He barked out orders and we hastily got up to do his bidding.

“What about you? What are you going to do?’ His brother asked.

“I’m off to Mota Bhayya’s shop to get the paper and string’.

With that he coolly sauntered off leaving us gasping in fear and surprise. We had been specifically told never to go anywhere near the bhaiyya’s shop. All of us had been threatened with dire consequence if we even went within a hundred meters of the shop.

We knew he would go there and come back. The funny thing was that he would get away with it too; after all he was Shekhar dada. He could do anything….

I started collecting twigs from under the trees and meanwhile Suresh headed off whistling to the kitchen where old cook uncle was smoking his quiet beedi while no one was around.

After a while Bivek appeared looking jubilant, he had a 2 meter bamboo pole with him. He had managed to get it for free from Kumar’s mother. Had Kumar been there he would surely have asked for money.

Kumar was the village blacksmith. His forge was another place we were not supposed to go but all the same we would. It was hard to ignore the fascination the forge held for us with its bellows going whoooosssshhh whoooosssshhh.

The forge would be glowing fiercely and Kumar would be hunched by its side carefully handling a white hot strip of metal. The sight of white hot metal being dipped in water with a great sizzle followed by the acrid smell was something worth being punished for.

Just then we heard a yell and saw Suresh sprinting up the garden path. ‘Just you wait’, yelled the old man ‘wait till your aunt and uncle get home’. He shook his fist at Suresh and went back inside, slamming the door so hard that Kalae the black Tibetan mastiff came charging around the house to see if anything was wrong.

He came up to where we were, rather breathlessly, ’Wow, the old man is still sharp as ever, I didn’t see him around and had just got a handful into my pocket when he came in ‘. I did manage to grab some more before he charged’, he giggled. His pocket was bulging with the flour but then he took a look at my small heap of twigs and slapped his forehead.

“Het terrika!, we have no dekchi……Let’s go”, he said. A few minutes later we found ourselves in the shed where Suresh directed us to look for two empty tins. Fearful of the old cook seeing us and screaming blue murder, we luckily found two of my grandma’s empty Complan tins scuttled off as fast as we could.

‘Get some water in this’, he directed Bivek and told me to look for three big stones.

By this time some of the excitement of kite making had worn off and I asked him,

‘Dada are we really making a Kite?’ He laughed, told me not to be a pest and do what he said.

He was all right when he was by himself and not with his big brother.

With the three stones he made a small hearth and stood the tin on it. He proceeded to mix the water and the flour in the tin, stirring in the flour slowly with a stick.

We had no matches so I trotted off to fetch my father’s lighter.

We watched Suresh light the fire and wisps of smoke floated up in the air. Soon the mixture inside the tin began to splutter and boil and Suresh kept stirring it with a fat twig till we got a hot, thick gluey paste.

“Yummy”, Bivek laughed and pretended to eat it; and promptly burnt his finger.

Shekhar came up walking in that leisurely fashion he rather fancied himself in and threw down a small bundle of paper and string.

“Where is the knife?’ he asked.

We fell silent.

“I’m not going,’ Suresh announced, ‘I am already in trouble with the old man.’

“Not me ‘’ Bivek piped in hastily.

I kept on looking at the sky hoping he would not ask me to fetch the knife from the kitchen.

The old cook had been a cook in my grandfather’s regiment and had seen my father as a boy. He would always be complaining about us and our elders seemed to listen to him all the time.

My father a strict disciplinarian, believed in the maxim, “spare the rod and spoil the child”. There had been many times we had been punished because of the old man’s complaints. With a sinking heart I hoped he had not seen me sneaking out of my parent’s room with the lighter.

“Darcheraeuwa haru. (You cowards)’, Shekhar dada spat contemptuously and took out his own scout knife with the brown sheath. He was in the Boy Scouts and had interesting things with him but he would use them only if nothing else was available.

Dexterously he split the bamboos into halves and then proceeded to cut out thin strips of bamboo from one half. We watched fascinated as he smoothened each strip, running the blade gently over them while curly shavings fell off magically.

‘You two go and find an old bottle’, he ordered Bivek and me, and ‘we need some glass dust.’

That was the first I had heard of ‘glass dust’. But obediently we got up and walked towards the shed once more. To our disgust, there was the surly old man, sitting right next to the shed, smoking another of his horrible smelly beedis.

We looked at one another in dismay, and then Bivek brightened up, ‘let’s check out the garbage heap’, he suggested.

I was not very happy and objected.

‘Do you want to tell Da that you can’t find a stupid bottle?” he asked.

I guess I did not and soon we were poking around the garbage heap with a long stick.

A few minutes later Bivek was jubilantly holding up an orange juice bottle, ‘Yippee a Dipy’s’, he cried.

“What are you doing in the garbage heap?” bawled the old cook and we ran breathlessly back to the grove once more.

The two brothers were sticking the paper on cross made of the bamboo.

‘Hold it gently, there now stick it on’

‘Wait, not that way……..”

The two of them seemed to be carrying out a rather difficult but interesting task.

Seeing us crowd around, Shekhar barked out his orders once more, ‘You grind that bottle into dust,’.

Turning to me he went on…. ‘ And you, just get away from the broken bottle will you. I don’t want to hear another lecture about how we teach you all the wrong things in life.’.

‘But I want to help’, I protested.

Shekhar da just shrugged and turned away to concentrate on the kite.

I joined Bivek in smashing the bottle and pounding it on a flat rock with a smaller rock till all we had left of the bottle was a fine powder. (Luckily the two of us came to no harm in what I now see as a very dangerous thing to do.).

Now it was time for the master to get on with his show and Shekhar took over completely.

Using a bundle of grass he carefully swept the ‘glass dust’ into the tin with the flour glue had been prepared and mixed it well. “I need some plastic bags’ he muttered to no one in particular and Bivek quickly ran back to the garbage heap and came back with six or seven of them.

The brothers unwound the string and strung it across the plum trees. It was a very long string and took a long time. By the time they were done the whole grove was crisscrossed with the red string that looked like a washing line gone crazy.

I sat patiently on the grass and watched them with great fascination. The excitement mounting further when Shekhar da slipped his hand in a plastic bag, secured it with a piece of string and slipped on another and another on the same hand till he was ‘wearing’ a many layered plastic bag ‘glove’ in his right hand.

Suresh picked up the “glue and glass dust” tin and served a generous portion of the gooey stuff on to his brother’s plastic covered hand. Gently Shekhar held the stretched string between his hands and slowly dragged the glue along the length of the string. It was quite some time before he was done. Sweating a little he sat down on the grass with a sigh.

‘Is it ready now?’ I asked for I was getting very impatient.

‘We wait till it is dry, and apply a second layer,’ he replied and curled up in the grass to sleep. I sat in the grass impatiently waiting for the glue to dry. Bivek lay on his back and squinted at the sky occasionally pointing to the one stray passing cloud as sometimes a dragon, a boat or an old man.

Suresh, meanwhile was busy boring holes on the top and the bottom of the other Complan tin. He then carefully inserted a foot long stick that he had been whittling to a smooth finish. The stick was just long enough to stick out a hand grip each from the two holes.

He was making the spool for the kite string so he said.

Taking a small piece if black plastic pipe Suresh held it over the fire and waited till it started melting and burning with a foul smell. He carefully dripped the melted plastic on to the place where the stick jutted out of the can at both ends.

‘This will prevent the stick from slipping out of the can. He put it down carefully and waited for it to cool.

Kite making was fun but I did not like all this waiting.

Thankfully enough the glue had dried and the second layer was applied, and then, to my dismay, the old cook called us in for tea. “I don’t want any,’ I declared.

‘Well, I do,” replied Shekhar and Bivek together.

There was nothing to do except breath in deeply and hold it in tight to stop myself exploding with impatience. That day, I remember feeling the tea was hotter than usual and did not taste very nice nor did my favorite “Thin Arrowroot Biscuits’. And of course, all the while, old cook threatened to complain about our “Very Bad behavior’ as soon as everyone was back.

Finally, the string was wound up in the Complan tin spool; the kite was attached to the string. The wind was just right and up it went; with the haughtiest rustle a kite ever made.

Impatiently tugging at the string it soared up to the sky taking our dreams with it.

It was quite something our kite. A purple and white beauty with a tail made up of 12 white paper butterflies on a string.

There we stood, four kids…..maybe a little dirty.

Bivek was sucking his finger he had managed to burn while cooking the glue.

Suresh had a small patch of melted black plastic on his pants leg.

I had a scraped knee while running away from the old cook uncle.

Only Shekhar dada stood unruffled as always, playing out the string and winding it back a little, skillfully making the kite go higher and higher and higher…………..

Time stood still for a while and we flew with the kite, high in the sky, looking down at the green hills below and the sunny little valley we knew as home. Childhood is magical.

Years have gone by, the two brothers moved to France, Shekhar has two children and is divorced. He works in a hotel.

Suresh works in construction and has decided never to marry.

Bivek moved to Kalimpong where he runs a small shop and lives with his old father and wife and kids.

I moved away and married an army officer and have to keep moving around the country.

The old cook uncle is no more.

Yet I know; the silence of the lazy afternoon in the sunny valley is often punctured with the cry,’CHHETT’.

Another kite slowly floats down to settle gently in the tall magnolia tree right next to the plum grove where four children spent an afternoon making a kite.

© September 2007