Basant Background

Before Pakistan and India were split into two, Basant, whose Sanskrit root means spring, was celebrated across Punjab. When the India-Pakistan partition split the Punjab in two, Basant remained a Lahori traditional event, but not without detractors.

Flying kites has been a passion in this part of the world, for adults and children as well. In Pakistan, people even fly kites at night, using powerful beam and searchlights. And every year, Basant transforms the skies over Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, into a glittery spectacle of thousand of thousands of kites.

Basant is represented by the yellow colour of mustard flowers. A festival which had its beginnings as a Hindu celebration but became more secular as different religions came to India and participated in the joy of the occasion. The streets, parks and the roof tops especially are alive with cheers of "Vo Kata" or Kite down, followed by drums beats(dholwalas).

Adults and children love to indulge in kite duels, and that is where the danger lies. For duels, the kites are flown on a thin wire or on a thick string coated with glass or chemicals, to better attack opponent's kites. Stray kites can and do drag their strings unpredictably, tangling around a human neck or limb and cutting it.

A maker of kite string, said his string was so thin it could not possibly slit anyone's throat. Before him, workers coated long stretches of string with a paste of crushed glass: the sharper the glass, the more lethal against its rivals in the sky.