The heartstrings of a kite
Arundathy Gunawardena
It was a Sunday afternoon and Anushka sat in her little study reading
a book. The afternoon was not so warm thanks to the breeze that was
blowing from morning. Anushaka’s little dog Bingo was also busy in the
back yard with occasional barks. He could not bear to see a kite that
was flying high in the sky. It attracted his attention, and so he would
give an occasional bark.
This is the time that the children get busy with their kites,
especially with the school holidays. Driving down her lane these days,
Anushka almost daily sees the two little boys front house with a friend
of the same age busy with a kite. Either they are repairing it or
getting ready to fly it. That Sunday afternoon she saw the kite outside
just flying past her window. “The little ones are trying to get it off
the ground,” Anushka thought.
Soon she forgot about them and got engrossed with her reading. After
sometime she was jolted with the noise of a pelted stone which first
fell on the side of their roof and then finally rolled down to land near
their car which was parked under the porch. She rushed out to see what
was happening.
There was silence outside her gate where the little ones were trying
to fly their kite. She opened the gate. Two little boys stood outside
looking guilty. “Who pelted the stone?” Anushka asked angrily. There was
silence. She asked the same question again. One boy pointed the finger
at his friend and said, “he pelted the stones to break the string of the
entangled kite in that electrical wire”.
Anushka craned her head out of the gate and looked at the pointed
direction. She could see a kite hanging on the wire not that high up!
However, Anushka was quite angry over the incident. The stone could have
hit the windscreen of their car or broken a glass of a window. So she
reprimanded the child and said, “don’t behave so foolishly. You go to
school don’t you? You should know to use your head before doing
something stupid like this. You could have easily smashed up the
windscreen of the car!!” Anushka’s voice was stern.
The boy owed up, yet did not say anything but looked down sheepishly.
Just having said this she closed the gate and walked into the house and
sat down and tried to continue to read the book. She was still angry
with the child.
Anushka later thought about the whole incident. She discussed the
incident with her husband who was also present at the time. He
understood the situation better than Anushka did. May be because he
would have done the same thing when he was a child, she thought. His
sympathy was with the child more than anything else.
Although it was a matter that could have been easily forgotten,
Anushka that evening felt sorry for having shouted at the child. “The
child and kite episode is a very serious thing”, she discussed with her
husband. Her mind became clear in understanding what the kite meant to a
child. A little child’s whole world at that moment is the kite! in other
words, there is a kind of love and bond growing between the child and
the kite. What happens, when it breaks away from the child and gets
stuck on a tree, electrical wire or gets blown off in the distant sky?
It must be causing so much of heartache to the child” Anushka told her
husband.
“Imagine the effort that goes to make a kite, especially when a child
gets involved in it” Anushka further elaborated. “Once it is made, the
child takes it happily and proudly and starts flying it somewhere in the
neighbourhood. As it takes off, it swings to the left and right as if in
a gesture of goodbye to the child. For a while both the child and the
kite are united in a happy kind of togetherness. And then when it gets
entangled and breaks off, oh how it must be breaking the little one’s
heart to see it happening to his kite! The urge in the child is somehow
to save the kite and that may be the reason why so many tragic accidents
happen! At that moment the child forgets the whole world and he will
think only of his kite which has become a part of him. His love for the
kite is unexplainable.
Anushka having understood this, she invited the two boys to her house
the next day. The little boy who pelted stone was scared to come in,
expecting a further bashing! His friend Dilan took the fear out of his
friend and walked in.
She sat with them and explained to them the serious consequences that
can happen in the neighbourhood when stones are pelted and also the
consequences of touching electrical wires trying to save a kite. She
explained about how one could get electrocuted due to lack of knowledge.
They listened to her intently. Anushka’s heart was full of love and
sympathy towards these two little ones and so she promised to buy
material needed to make another kite. Anushka knew that their parents
cannot always afford to buy these for the boys. And then finally she
opened the fridge and gave them a chocolate to share and be happy!
Before they parted, the two children bowed down and touched Anushka’s
and her husband’s feet in a gesture of thanks and love. “The world needs
more and more kites, doesn’t it?” Anushka said heartily. |
