Basant: The Deadliest Sport

Asem Mustafa Awan

Islamabad: Kite flying is probably the deadliest sport in Pakistan, and the official count is unknown, but in the days to come, many will be killed by the killer thread that is made with chemicals and can easily slice the jugular vein or the neck.
There will be people falling off the rooftops with eyes focused on the thread, people getting crushed by the ongoing traffic as they fail to see the approaching vehicle, transformers exploding owing to metallic wires, and lastly, aerial firing claiming human lives between the rival kite flyers. Innocent people who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time pay the price for their lives.
The ‘Basant Season’ (kite flying) has started, and thousands of these kites are in the skies with people holding on to their breath as the killer thread can wreak havoc anytime and anywhere.
The activity is banned by law, but where is the law in the ‘land of the pure’, a question that everyone asks but negates in the same breath?
The death count has started, and the people who are responsible are never held accountable, very much like the collateral damage that can happen anywhere in Pakistan.
Two people have died in Rawalpindi, and there have been numerous arrests, but will it stop the activity? is a question that has a negative answer.
This cultural event dates back decades and has a history, but ‘distorted history’ in the books has been taught, and now what is accepted owing to ‘policymakers then’ is deemed wrong by the ‘policymakers now’.
People have died, and this should stop, but so many deaths are unaccounted for. Will it be stopped? Barkhan The incident is not over, people are still angry, and not all family members have returned. The three dead bodies in the well—who do they belong to too?
These questions are there, and people do ask though all efforts are made to hush up the ‘dissent voices’.
This blatant disregard for the law by the commoner depicts a social behavior that underlines a lot, and it should be taken as a wake-up call for the ‘authorities concerned’.
This is no secret: very little of the funds are available for the common man in Pakistan, and there is very little space for entertainment in a commoner’s life who works day in and day out to make ends meet.
The kite flying is done on property that is owned or rented by the commoner, and for a few days he shares laughter with family and friends. It is a rarity; sunken eyes and weak physical frames tell it all.
The very last of the laughter is now at risk as the common public don’t have enough money to buy chemical thread that costs thousands of rupees, and the aerial firing is done by the rich, who have no regard for the law.
The commoner in Pakistan is referred to as the ‘walking dead’; those who die by the killer thread are from the same clan. Sadly, in the ‘land of the pure’ millions living below the poverty lines have lives that make no difference to the powerful elite who hoard more money in Swiss banks, which is more than the entire debt that Pakistan owes to the world.

The writer is a journalist based in Islamabad and writes on a wide range of issues.

Photo Credit: Waseem Khan