I was lazing on the silvery Cherayi beach in Kerala, watching the blue waters of the Arabian Sea preparing to swallow the setting sun's embers. My twin children were flying kites at a distance. Soon they came running to me, tears in their eyes.
For, their kites had come crashing down after they got entangled. ``What's there to cry? Kites can't be permanently over the sky, right?'' I admonished them.
I separated the kites that were entwined and helped the children lift the kites up till they were airborne. I loosened my hold on the thread and the kites started moving further up, joyously swishing their tails. I regretted scolding the children.
I'd flown kites as a child; the ones that were home-made, with old newspaper, dried palm leaf stems bound together with boiled, mashed rice. Predictably enough, these kites were so clumsily put together that they simply wouldn't take off. I didn't know then the factor that engineered the kite's fall. I also failed to derive the pleasure that kite-flying brought.
Now, many years later, navigating the kites in the company of my children, I could enjoy the soft current my fingers experienced as they pulled the thread that connected the kite. I felt a thrill. Our joy, however, proved short-lived as the kites got entangled once again before taking a nosedive.
I asked myself, ``How can a kite fly on its own?'' as my wife tried to pacify the children, luring them with ice cream. The sun was getting submerged in the ocean. At a distance, a foreign tourist was capturing the sunset in his video camera. He would probably be back at dawn to witness the sun's resurrection as it once again came to life, albeit in another direction.
A huge wave came, lashing across the shore. As the retreating wave dragged away the sand under my feet, the question of kite-flying rose once again in my mind. What makes kites fly? I sat wondering and an energetic breeze whizzed past. Did it say it was responsible for the kite's flight? I wouldn't know.
I watched a hawker who sold bamboo flutes pass by, walking with a slight hunch, carrying a large sack full of flutes. He was also playing a flute. A flute by itself never created a song, did it? Neither did the lips nor the fingers of the player. It was a synthesis of all that which created the enchanting music.
I looked in the direction of my children and the kites that had fallen flat. The hitherto active breeze appeared to have taken a temporary respite.
I received an answer to my question suddenly: that a kite flies because there's the breeze, and it soars further up, only when we loosen the thread. Above all, kite has the aerodynamic design and lightness, and, hence the innate quality to flock with other friendly forces to explore dizzying heights of mystery.
So, like the melody that emanates from the flute, it's a synthesis that makes the kite fly. And, in the absence of an orchestra, everything, including life, remains in an inactive state; to be more precise, in a state of death.
My children were back with ice creams. As we moved away from the beach, they turned back to see the fallen kites we'd left behind. I could see the despondency in their hearts - for them, the kites were dead and so would fly no more. I, too, would've come to the same conclusion.
But today I have come to realise that there's life even in a state of death. I was wondering how to convey this complicated philosophy to my children when the hawker with the bamboo flutes came back from the opposite direction; so, too, the breeze that had come to life once again.