Way past midnight in this sleepless city’s bustling food street in Gowalmandi, the Nite Kite Shop is running up brisk business. Visitors take breaks between handis of brain curry and glassfuls of salty tea to pick up mementos. There are just a few cities around the world that have a knack for celebrating themselves. Lahore is one of them, and akin to the miniature carnival masks of Venice, it sums up its unique joie de vivre in colourful kites. At the Nite Kite Shop, they come in small sizes and diverse colours. So, it this it then? Will Lahore hereafter, now that Pakistan’s Supreme Court has made an unambiguous statement by banning the manufacture and flying of kites, be content with these flightless souvenirs? Will those cries of “bo kata” as a kiteflyer snaps an opponent’s string be echoes only from the past? No, chirp the busy attendants, the date is set. Basant has been postponed to March 5, to avoid an overlap with Moharram. The festival, they say, is on. The Punjab government and the Lahore City District government are all set to appeal to the court to relax the ban for a few days around Basant when it takes up the case once again on January 25. Lahore has fought hard—or as most things go in this city, it has lived it up exuberantly—to preserve symbols of its urban identity. Basant, celebrated to signal the arrival of spring, has been welcomed here since longer than anyone can remember with the flying of kites. Fundamentalists once tried to stop it, saying it was a Hindu festival. The court late last year took suo motu action, banning kite flying on reasons of loss to life and property. Many kite-fliers coat the string with broken glass or simply take metal strings, damaging electricity wires. And as they race across rooftops, there is the possibility of electrocution and tipping over perilously. Last year, for instance, the toll was 19 dead and more than 200 injured. So, what is the importance of Basant for Lahore? “Massive,” says Murtaza Razvi, Lahore editor of Dawn. “The mullahs gave up on trying to stop Basant. Zia ul-Haq did not even try.” The popularity of the festival, he explains, is reflected in the rainbow coalition that has formed to ensure its preservation. “The nazim and the Pervez Elahi government feel people are going to defy the ban, so as a face-saver they are seeking an exception of 15 days a year.’’ And President Pervez Musharraf, notes Ejaz Haider, news editor of The Friday Times, has been winning popularity with Lahoris by speaking for Basant. The real pressure on the streets has come with those associated with the trade. On December 9, for instance, when the court upheld the ban in Lahore, hundreds of men, women and children involved in kite manufacture gathered outside in a protest that turned violent. ‘‘Lahoris,’’ says Razvi, ‘‘saw it as a Lahore-specific ban.’’ On and before Basant, many rooftops in and around the Old City are taken over by corporates and event planners for lakhs of rupees. Among the most prized properties then is Lahore’s immensely evocative restaurant, Cooco’s Den—on the edge of Hiramandi, the dancing girls’ quarter, and with its terraced rooftops overlooking the Badshahi Masjid and the Fort. “As always, a bank will book the roof again this year,” says a waiter. So how will it go this spring? Shrugs Razvi: “Joie de vivre is a part of this city. Even Zia could not crush it.”
