A Kite

I was only ten when the kites stopped flying in Lahore.

Before "partition" was a word adults whispered, Lahore still felt like it belonged to all of us. Our gully in the walled city sounded the same every morning, milkmen calling out prices, cyclists weaving between rickshaws and tangas, and women arguing over vegetable prices.

From our rooftop, I could see the street, the masala shop sign, and the minaret of the nearby Mosque. Best of all I could always see my best friend Kashif’s balcony where we would do hand signals to meet.

Kashif and I weren’t the same age, he was eleven, taller, and always running ahead, but he never made me feel smaller.

On Basant Panchami, everyone’s rooftops were full. Kashif and my family always celebrated together. Everyone knew, the Sahni’s and the Siddiqui’s were inseparable. Painted kites hung from nails, our mothers gossiped in kitchens, and our fathers sipped chai together while our servants tied string. My kite was the yellow one Kashif had helped me paint in the courtyard. His younger sister Bano had gotten yellow all over her hands and kept painting on the marble floor until Safina Chachi found out and scolded her.

Kashif whistled on his balcony - our signal.

I walked up to my balcony. The smell of meethe chawal cooking in the kitchen wafted up to my room. Maa shouted as a reminder not to lean too far over the edge.

Kashif didn’t say much, he held up his kite and tested out how the wind was with his palm like the older kids did. My kite barely went up, but his went up clearly in one strong pull. “Stop jerking the string” he yelled “Let the wind do the work for you”

Kashif was not only my best friend, but he was the older brother I never had.

That was the last festival we celebrated without any judgement or fear.

By April, things started to be scary.

Muslim men started to meet in the market late at night. Men who I had never seen together before congregated and painted slogans on papers, new words that Bauji told me to never read out aloud.

Some evenings, everyone stayed in earlier than usual.

On one of those scary evenings, Kashif came to our door, not the rooftop anymore. His hair was all over the place and his hands were folded.

“There were fights in the bazaar today” he told my father “Abbajaan says not to go over there”

I saw Safina Chachi carefully come outside, calling him back sharply.

Bauji thanked him and reassured Kashif that he wouldn’t tell Nasir Chacha. He shut the door and locked it even though it was still light out. Bauji and Maa never told me anything, but even a child can sense fear.

The violence in Lahore didn’t arrive all at once. It came in noises first.

Shouting somewhere far off. Then closer. A clothing shop’s shutters slammed in the afternoon. A rickshaw overturned in the street and left there for hours.

One night, while we were eating, a crowd rushed past our house. Someone pounded on the doors. Someone else screamed something about fires in the next neighborhood. My mother grabbed my arm so tightly it hurt.

Kashif’s house went dark too. For the first time, no one came to our rooftop the next morning.

That week, my parents began packing small things, documents, jewellery, and my sister's clothes. They didn’t say “we’re leaving,” but I could tell. Adults don’t pack jewelry quietly unless they’re scared.

The night we left, the streets were almost silent. Only the distant hum of people moving, like the city was shifting.

We walked quickly. My father carried my sister. My mother held my hand. The bundle on her back made her walk stiffly.

Halfway down the lane, someone stepped out of a doorway.

It was Kashif.

His arms were behind his back. He wasn’t wearing shoes. His shirt was wrinkled. He didn’t come too close, just close enough that I could see he’d been crying.

He brought his hands forward, and in them was the kite he painted for me months ago.

“This flew out your window,” he said.

My father looked around nervously. The lane felt unsafe; nobody wanted to stand still.

Kashif didn’t say anything else. He just nodded to me, once, firmly, like older boys do when they know something is ending.

Safina Chachi called his name from somewhere behind. Though calling her Chachi didn’t seem right anymore.

He backed away.

We kept walking.

I looked over my shoulder until he disappeared behind the doorframe.

The refugee camp in Amritsar was crowded. Families on charpoys, sacks of grain stacked in corners, many children under the weather. There were lines for water and lines for food. Maa’s voice sounded tired even when she wasn’t speaking.

Festivals arrived on the calendar, but the camp didn’t change with them.

Holi passed black and white

Eid passed with no moon

Diwali passed dark and lifeless

And Basant Panchami passed with no kites in the sky.

One volunteer handed out paper for children to draw. I drew two rooftops facing each other and a kite in the middle.

My mother sat next to me, threading a needle, and didn’t say anything. Though I remembered how she and Safina Chachi would thread designs on chunni’s together.

We built a life again, in a smaller town, then a bigger one. My father opened a shop in Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh. My mother kept the household together. My sister grew up hearing only our side of the story.

I kept the kite wrapped in a cloth inside a brown trunk. The paint faded more each year, but it didn’t matter, because my memories never will.

People wrote articles, made speeches, debated numbers and borders. They talked about “migration,” “riots,” “upheaval,” “lines drawn across maps.”

But for me, Partition always stayed simpler.

It was the moment a boy in Lahore pressed a kite into my hand without calling it goodbye.