the day they banned spring

why did lahore’s kites fall from the skies?

Words by Sparsh Ahuja & Daniyal Raheal
Photos by Daniyal Raheal
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Rooftops of the Old City on Basant, 1998

On a festive Saturday afternoon in the spring of 2007, Sayed “Ali” Reza Zaidi was riding his motorcycle through the Old Walled City of Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province of Pakistan. Ali swerved deftly through the city's ancient narrow lanes, dodging the usual potholes, donkeys and squabbling vendors on his way to pick up some medicine. Children zig-zagged in front of him, chasing after kites adrift in the wind, eyes transfixed on sheets of fine paper breaking away from severed string.

Even the most seasoned drivers in Lahore would find navigating this maze of streets daunting, but for Ali it was a customary scene. Yet, as he approached a familiar junction, he felt a prickling sensation tighten around his throat. “I was burning,” Ali would say later. “It was like someone had pressed a branding rod against my neck.”

Ali jolted his motorcycle to a halt and staggered onto the street. Within seconds, his entire shirt was soaked in blood. As he panicked, he tried in vain to wave down some passing cars. “A whole crowd had gathered, but no one helped,” he remembered. “They thought it was a murder scene, and they didn’t want to get involved.”

Eventually, a good neighbor, seeing that Ali urgently needed medical attention, escorted him to the local hospital. The doctors took one look at the wound and told him that they’d need to operate. He had lost a lot of blood, and his neck had been sliced all the way down to the muscle.

Ali awoke to 32 stitches on his neck, and police officers by the side of his hospital bed, waiting for him to regain consciousness. They asked him whether he had been in a fight or had an accident.

Ali shook his head weakly.

He had been strangled by a kite.

Wazir Khan Mosque, Delhi Gate, Old City Lahore 2024

“I used to adore flying kites,” says Ali, who is now in his mid 30s and works as a private contractor. “During Basant, my cousins would come from all over the country to celebrate. Kites and cricket—those were our entire childhood,” Ali smiles and sighs.

For several centuries, Basant was the beloved kite flying holiday in Lahore, marking the beginning of spring and the long-awaited harvest of the vast agricultural fields on the city’s periphery. Each year, thousands would take to the Old Walled City, the soul of the sprawling metropolis, filling the air with a dazzling kaleidoscope of color and sound. This wasn’t just for show, but rather a deeply competitive affair. Duelers exhibited their prowess on the city’s rooftops, shouting the war-cry of “Bo-Kata!” (the string is cut!) as they triumphed over their opponents.

Families bought their kites weeks in advance, and serious flyers would commission artisans to make them to measure. They would spend hours threading their kites—a process measured to perfection, because it controlled how the kite flew. If it wasn’t done right, the kites would fall out of the sky, or simply not fly at all.

In a society divided by class, all kites were equal in the sky. When a kite was launched into the air, the flyer would pick a target and maneuver their kite towards it. With deft movements, their kites would swoop and dive, aiming to entangle the strings of their rivals—a fight known as a ‘paicha’. After the decisive cut, the craftiest of fighters – using specialised equipment - would encircle the trailing line of their opponents with their own, capturing the fallen kite and adding insult to injury. Spectators below would cheer their favorites, beating drums and revelling in the excitement of the contest.

“My first Basant, I didn’t know how to fly. No one would even trust me to hold a spool,” says Ali. “Someone threw me a pinna (a ball of yarn), and told me to learn how to hold it before flying a kite.”

Pinnas and Patangs. Lahore, 1999

However, in the mid 2000s, things took a sinister turn. To secure an edge over their opponents, battle-hardened kite flyers began to thread their kites with chemicalized doar–an illegally manufactured nylon twine laced with a deadly cocktail of glass and metal shards. In a highly unregulated industry abetted by a shady gambling market, the manufacturing of this “unbreakable” doar quickly proliferated, replacing traditional methods of cotton string production.

What was once a joyful tradition became a perilous endeavor. In densely packed Lahore—a city notorious for its laissez-faire attitude to helmets and road safety— motorcyclists like Ali were clipped by the crossfire.

After 19 deaths and over 200 injuries in the 2005 Basant season—some involving motorcycles, while others involved falling off rooftops and balconies, or mishandling sharpened kite strings—the Supreme Court of Punjab issued a blanket ban on the flying, manufacturing, buying, and selling of kites. The regulation effectively stopped the ancient festival in its tracks. This was intended as a temporary measure, but after a lift of the ban led to more injuries (like that of Ali) in 2007, the court order was pushed into law. With the flick of a pen, a soaring symbol of Lahore craftsmanship and pride was taken out of the sky.

While the still-enforced ban has saved lives, it has crippled an industry of thousands of kitemakers in the Old Walled City—artisans who had continued the centuries-old craft, and who fervently campaigned for the ban to be lifted. Many fell into poverty. Some have since passed away. At the center of it all is Basant, the shuttered celebration so closely tied to Lahore’s identity. As the restriction approaches its third decade, many in Lahore are wondering if a continued ban is a necessary measure, or an irreparable stain on Pakistan’s cultural fabric.

“Sure, I’m terrified of riding a motorcycle now.” Ali admits. “But when your nails are overgrown, you don’t cut off your entire finger. Why couldn’t they save Basant?”

Maharaja Ranjit Singh on horseback with attendants with all dressed in Basant, 19th century, unknown painter

Like many festivals on the subcontinent, the modern celebration of Basant emerged from a vibrant mix of Hindu, Islamic, and Sikh spiritual traditions. It traces its roots to the ancient spring festival of Vasant Panchami, celebrated each year on the fifth day of the Hindu month of Magha in honor of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge. Across the agrarian breadbasket of Northern India and Pakistan, the arrival of spring is marked by the blossoming of the mustard crops, leaving the fields a deep hue of yellow. Locals began celebrating this harvest by dressing in yellow and sharing sweetened rice dyed in saffron and turmeric—practices that continue to this day.

With the arrival of Islam in South Asia in the 12th century, many cultural traditions underwent a process of religious fusion, and Basant was no exception. “By the Mughal Era, Basant had become a community festival,” says Harleen Singh, an author and archivist of pre-Partition Punjab. Sufi missionaries in Delhi embraced and secularized many of the native traditions as part of a program of religious outreach.

Shrine of Madho Lal Hussain, Lahore

However, it was only in the early 19th century, during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, that Lahore’s particular love affair with Basant began. The Maharaja, who made the city the capital of the Sikh Empire, sanctioned land grants to the shrine of the 16th century Sufi saint Shah Hussain, infamous for his controversial relationship with a Hindu boy named Madho. Over time, Madho and Hussain became inseparable – an “irresistible attraction”—such that Hussain is still referred to as "Madho Lal Hussain," indicating the fusion of their identities in the popular imagination.

Three hundred years after Madho and Shah Hussain’s love story, Ranjit Singh directed his citizens—Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs alike—to dress in yellow and come together to commemorate Basant at their tomb—an embrace of religious pluralism and culturally sanctioned homoeroticism, and a progressive contrast to the conservative attitudes of today's South Asia.

Singh also introduced kite flying as a regular part of the annual Basant fair at Shah Hussain’s shrine. This was apt, as Shah Hussain himself had written verses comparing himself to a kite—“my string in my lover’s hand"—a mystic allusion to the Divine (or Madho himself). He also referred to the Divine as the “kite-flier” with human beings as his flailing subjects, floating in the search of truth.

These traditions trickled down into modern Lahore, even after the 1947 Partition, which split the Indian subcontinent across religious lines and led to virtually all of Lahore’s Sikh and Hindu communities fleeing the city during heavy rioting.

A festival of Professional Kite Fighters (1989) Photograph by Amjad Pervez,
Photograph of original poster of Kite Flying Association Lahore

By the 1980s, Basant had become so popular that the sky during the festival resembled a spiderweb filled with hundreds of threads. Even getting your kite off the ground was difficult. It was not uncommon to get a kite thread caught in the middle of someone else’s paicha and falter before it was in a position to fight.

Amateur fighting evolved into the creation of an official kite flying association, and eventually a 1980s petition to the Pakistan Olympic Board to include kite flying in the Olympic Games. The petition never got off the ground, but, thanks to Basant, kite flying had become an integral part of life in Lahore.

Last kitemakers of Lahore, Barood Khana, 2024

Nestled deep in the Old Walled City lies the Haveli Barood Khana, a relic of Lahore's past transformed into a vibrant hub for the city's artistic and cultural circles. Once a Sikh ammunition depot, the 18th-century manor now serves as a haven for Lahore's creative community. It’s also the home and workshop of Farhan and Mirza, brothers who owned two kite shops before the ban.

Finding the last few kitemakers in Lahore is no easy task; since 2007, the brothers have given up their craft completely (with the exception of a handful of kites gifted discreetly to overseas Pakistanis). They don’t use their last names in public these days, fearing backlash from heavy-handed law enforcement.

Until the ban, Haveli Barood Khana hosted some of the city’s most elaborate Basant festivities, inviting dignitaries and politicians from across the world to celebrate the occasion in its gardened courtyard. “I remember as children we used to fly kites with our father on this very rooftop,” says Farhan, a frail figure in his early 50s, gesturing to the building behind. “It was how we bonded.”

After he turned 18, Farhan learned how to make his first kite from a nearby Ustad named Altaf Khan, a pre-Partition resident of Lahore who had trained over 800 craftsmen. Many would eventually work for him. “The training took eight years because he didn’t want his students to rush. He respected the art,” says Farhan, smiling wistfully. “Some of these kites were so light, you wouldn’t believe it,” he adds. “Modern kites need a lot of arm power to fly…people don’t even know what a real kite should feel like.”

These kites were made of tawas, a word referring to a thin single sheet of waxed kite-making paper. The kite-making community called the high-quality tawas “German Paper,” evoking a hint to its possible origin. Artisans would ingeniously adhere multiple tawas together to craft kites of various sizes, each christened based on its dimensions.

Basant and Memories of Pakistan by Dr Ajaz Anwar

“There were so many different types of kites, each with a different purpose,” explains Dr. Ajaz Anwar, a veteran painter renowned for his intricate watercolors of the Old Walled City.

In his paintings of Basant, Dr. Anwar showcases this diversity—from the diminutive triangular machar (mosquito) kite—named for the whirring its body made as it swung through the air, to the agile patangs—swift and competitive, but whose rapid movements could trouble an inexperienced handler. There were also parees, small “fairy kites”, and phapar daans—giant kites released in a great evening ceremony to mark the end of Basant, soaring against the twilight sky amidst a flurry of fireworks.

Some men didn’t fly kites on Basant. Lovingly nicknamed the Luteras (Robbers), they would run around with scavenger poles made of bamboo, hunting for the spoils of the day—the defeated kites drifting in the wind or caught up in trees. Their purpose was to gather as many of these kites as possible, and they would celebrate their own “Luteron ki Basant” (Robber’s Spring) the weekend after. In true Lahore fashion, even those who couldn’t afford kites figured out a way to partake in the festivities.

Basant was also lucrative for the kitemakers and vendors in the Old City, who would welcome hordes of tourists at peak season. By the early 2000s, it had burgeoned into a gigantic industry, employing over 100,000 people across Lahore.

“There was such great potential in kitemaking at that time…we were making up to 10,000, 15,000 kites a year,” remembers Farhan. “We’d craft them the whole year, and then sell most of them at Basant.''

He estimates that the brothers were earning around 80,000PKR a month (about $1,300 at the time), mainly selling kites to diaspora Pakistanis who came to visit from their new homes in the U.S. or Saudi Arabia. “I don’t even know the names of all of these countries…they came from everywhere!” laughs Mirza.

But after the sudden ban, the brothers were forced to give up their craft and take up jobs as domestic workers to make ends meet. “I felt as if the land beneath our feet had disappeared,” says Farhan, who claims the brothers were harassed by the police during the rapid transition. “All the stock in the shop was completely wasted,” his voice breaks. “They set it on fire.”

Dr. Anwar says that his Basant paintings are still in high demand as new commissions. “The sky in Lahore these days is gray, dull, and lifeless.” he explains. “I think people want to remember it filled up with color.”

Basant and Memories of Pakistan by Dr Ajaz Anwar

The city’s colorful string began to unravel in 2004, when the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), a militant Islamist group, took to the streets of Lahore. They demanded an end to Basant, a celebration they considered a heretic Hindu festival. Like other beloved aspects of Pakistani culture, Basant was caught in the religious fault lines of modern South Asia, stemming from the aftermath of the 1947 Partition.

This 2004 heresy claim marked the resurfacing of an old wound from two centuries earlier, when a 15-year-old Hindu boy named Haqeeqat Rai was beheaded in Lahore for allegedly slandering the Prophet Mohammad. He quickly became a martyr for the Hindu and Sikh communities in the city, and a group began to gather at his tomb to celebrate Basant instead of the common gathering ground in the Shrine of Madho Lal Hussain. This association, in turn, created the myth amongst orthodox Muslims that the festival itself celebrated blasphemy.

However, that was rarely the main narrative in contemporary Pakistan. In fact, marred by the instability of living under alternating military dictatorships and failed democratic experiments, this story was largely forgotten to history. Instead, Basant became the emblem of a counterculture and joy for a stifled society. For many, it became a form of escapist romanticism, an opportunity to rise above the mundane to experience a moment of unbridled joy. Even the word “patang”, denoting the kite which required the most skill to fly, refers to a moth determined to approach a burning flame.

Still from Patang Baaz Sajna Se, 1996

By the 1980s, the festival had permeated pop culture across Pakistan, appearing in films, music, and art. Songs like "Patang Baaz Sajna Se" (To My Kite Flying Lover) and others dedicated to Basant became popular anthems. The kite itself emerged as a symbol of freedom. “Sometimes, during the military dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq, the clerics would come to the rooftops after Friday prayers, yell at merrymakers flying kites, and call us ‘infidels,’” says Salima Hashmi. She laughs, continuing, “But this just made us more defiant. It made the people realize that this was their festival.”

In the 1990s, as a younger, Westernized generation began to celebrate Valentine's Day—another festival banned in Pakistan—Basant merged into a springtime celebration of kite-flying and romance. Pakistani TV dramas often depicted love stories unfolding on rooftops, a phenomenon mirrored in the Old City. In 2016, Dawn newspaper even quoted one Lahori lamenting the loss of a “secret tradition of sending letters to girls through kites”. He claimed that the “intimacy among people of Lahore” had “died with the festival.”

Kite shop, Lahore, 1999

“Culture fulfills the aesthetic impulses that lie within every human being. It touches something within you,” says Hashmi. Sadly, when the motorcyclists started getting injured, it was the perfect window for the Islamist right-wing to reignite historic fires. This time they succeeded, capitalizing on public fear.

“It was about power,” laments Hashmi, who was on a senior committee with the Punjab government to unsuccessfully negotiate the ban. “People will still surreptitiously fly kites. It is ridiculous to see policemen jumping across rooftops, chasing little boys.”

The kitemaker’s final touches on the tawa. Barood Khana, Lahore, 2024

At Haveli Barood Khana, Farhan sits on a plastic chair using the marble bench as a makeshift work table, fiddling with a stick of bamboo and two sheets of yellow and black German Paper. It has been many years since he’s made a kite.

“There are no more kite workshops” he says, holding up the paper indignantly. “Even these sheets I had to buy on the black market. They monitor the supply—you can get in a lot of trouble.”

Kitemaker checking his kite’s pull, Barood Khana, Lahore, 2024

Sitting in silence, he lays the sheet on the ground and slices the bamboo stick perfectly to the size of the paper without so much as a measurement. He lights a solitary candle and uses the flame to make black marks on the thinly sliced wood. “For aesthetic purposes,” he claims.

Then, taking some home-made glue, he carefully attaches the tip of the bamboo to the far corners of the sheet, reinforcing the edges with thread and black paper. With the deliberate care of someone who has repeated these motions hundreds of thousands of times, he folds, binds, and glues the kite's components together, the process resembling origami. Piece by piece, his labor transforms into art— a kite in its full glory.

“Now,” he asks, eyes alight, “where should we go to fly this?”