Vishwakarma Puja makes my North Calcutta blood pulsate with nostalgia. I can imagine my youthful days perched on the terrace, with my kite high up in the heavens gently swaying in the wind, a utopia of peace and tranquility reigning over me. But the exhilaration was short lived, marred by my neighboring kite flyers, who took great pleasure in intruding my cone of silence, haplessly tormenting with their superior sky games and inevitably followed with a bone -chilling exultation of ‘Bhoo Katta’. I was vanquished, my pride in tatters, my kite adrift, soon to be alien property; the child in me was desolate.
With time, not to be undone, my heart welled up with an icy cry for vengeance. Kite flying was a childish passion, what evolved was an implosion, the desire to play a ruthless war game in the Heavens marked by ‘dog-eat-dog’. It was a gambol with high-soaring license, the wind as my empowering soulmate and my kite, a puppet on the string poised for the leap of annihilation.
I learned the skillful manoeuvres: that delicate, surreptitious upper-cut, when you cream on the unsuspecting prey; the vicious undercut when with a torpedo ‘swish’ the prey loses not only his kite, but most of his’ manja’. The ultimate dénouement was when the victim’s kite was ‘lotkao’, wound around my kite, in a Laila-Majnu embrace. It was a sumptuous reward—the booty of war! The coup-de-grace was a blood curling, surreal Mongol-like joy in gleeful pillage spontaneously emitting from me, ‘Bhoo katta!’
Sun Tsu’s The Art of War should have been my manifesto in those halcyon days of youthful exuberance. After three decades it was seemingly gathering dust. I was then living under the Andhra Pradesh deep blue sky. A particular time of the year, the sky is dotted with a flame of colours, kites blissfully lolling in the wind. It was one of those days when my son goaded me to display my erstwhile skills in kite flying. The Petkati took off majestically from our terrace to everyone’s joy. Then unwittingly, an eerie spirit acquired control, as if self-programmed, it unleashed a pogrom of destruction systematically denuding the sky of kites, astounding the local benign flyers.
Time flies. Another three decades and by popular demand from my grand-children, I am asked to display my kite-flying skills in the South Kolkata sky. I have a reputation to keep. I took my favorite ‘Ghoyla’ with me, my heart leaping in a triumph of expectations. A pleading voice whispered in desperation, ‘Master, don’t set us free. Where is the sky? It is obscured by inhabitants hanging their clothes to dry. Overhead there is a maze of wires. Do you want us to lose our freedom and remain stranded hanging from wires?’
My dearest ‘Mukpora, Ektel, Petkati’, no need to play in the wind, kiss the clouds in ecstasy and embellish the sky. Abandon your sky dives. Rest in peace in my memories, my sweet companions of yore!
My learning was initiated in Calcutta Boys’ School, the mental windows opened in Presidency College and Allahabad University. I started writing, debating. The long stint in the Corporate MNC honed my skills and after retirement, another decade in the Academic World made me realise that I , seeped in nostalgia, can freely express my unfettered feelings with gay abandon.
