By Somini Sengupta

Date:07-02-05

Source: New York Times

LAHORE, Pakistan, Feb. 6 - Defying a chilly night, a bitter drizzle and the reprimands of the mullahs, Pakistanis broke loose this weekend in a boisterous annual rite of spring: Grown men lost sight of everything but chasing kites in the sky, children stayed up until dawn, women reveled on roofs, dressed in the color of mustard blossoms.

Even the birds seemed to forgo their ordinary routines, standing aside as hundreds of thousands of kites - white, pink, purple, polka-dotted, and most improbably, a replica of the American flag - soared and dipped over Lahore. On roofs in the old city and in the farmhouses of the rich, parties went on night and day. On Sunday evening, the muezzin called for prayer as firecrackers burst.

Basant, Lahore's version of Carnival, had arrived.

"It's a time when you can feel free and enjoy yourself," explained Zaheer Alam, 22, a college student who had driven four hours from Rawalpindi to fly kites at a public monument here. Around him, a gaggle of boys armed with tree branches skirmished to snatch a stray kite.

"We have a passion for kite flying," said Qamar Hassan, stating the obvious. Eyes glued to his kite way up in the gray Sunday morning sky, he was anxious to mow down a rival's kite before his own kite was mowed down. He and his friends had flown their kites until 5 a.m., only to return a few hours later to do it all again. Sleep was not on their minds. By the time a downpour began in midafternoon, only the hardy remained outside. By the thousands, vanquished kites hung limply from trees.

Long before Pakistan and India were cut into two, Basant, whose Sanskrit root means spring, was celebrated across this farm belt called the Punjab and nowhere more so than here, in this ancient walled city. When the India-Pakistan partition split the Punjab in two, Basant remained a Lahori heirloom, but not without detractors.

For years, Basant has been dogged by Islamists, who denounced it as a Hindu festival. Even this year, a petition was filed in court to try to suspend Basant celebrations on the ground that they are un-Islamic. The court dismissed the case.

To its proponents, Basant, which is also celebrated by Punjabis in India, offers a chance to show off a looser, freer Pakistan. "Basant is the perfect antidote to those who think Pakistan is a fundamentalist country," said Feisal Naqvi, a Lahore lawyer. "It is a wild pagan party."

They describe it as a secular and seasonal festival badly needed in a country that endures its share of strife and strictures. "There are fools in every religion," said Mian Yousaf Salahuddin, possibly Lahore's biggest Basant booster. "There's no religious connotation to it."

Basant has also come under fire for being dangerous. The metal strings that many kite fans favor have been known to knock out power lines and slit the throats of bystanders, and Basant weekend can be prone to a string of blackouts and accidents across the city. Agence France-Presse reported 13 deaths related to Basant this weekend; among the victims were two people who were struck by a car as they chased a stray kite.

In a back alley in the old walled city the other day, kite aficionados waved away the complaints. Saqi Shazada, a maker of kite string, said his string was so thin it could not possibly slit anyone's throat. Before him, workers coated long stretches of string with a paste of crushed glass: the sharper the glass, the more lethal against its rivals in the sky.

As for the mullahs who reprimand Basant revelers for un-Islamic activity, Mr. Shazada shrugged. "What is un-Islamic about it?" he said. "We enjoy sitting with our families."

"This is part of the blood of the Punjabi," boasted Waqar Ashraf, his brother and a kite seller. "Like eating roti," a whole-wheat flatbread that is the staple of a Punjabi meal.

A customer, Hammad Hassan, confessed to agreeing with the mullahs' objections. Then, looking at the two rolls of string he had just bought, he said sheepishly, "But this is just for one day."

Kite flying is still the mainstay of Basant. But in recent years, fueled in large part by an economic boom and a relative loosening of social mores, Basant has also blossomed into a more high-flying event for Lahore's elite, who spend their weekends flocking from musical concerts to fashion shows, from fancy-dress balls to all-night parties.

On Saturday night in the old walled city, the place for the jet set is Mr. Salahuddin's renovated mansion. In the courtyard stood the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. The fashion designer Hassan Sheheryar Yasin marveled at how Basant had become a part of the Pakistani fashion season. A member of Parliament, Kashmala Tariq, flipped open a can of Red Bull and admired the mini hot air balloons that took flight above her head. "People want more celebrations," she said. "Nobody wants to be depressed."

It did not much matter to Muhammad Pervez, a furniture polisher, how the rich reveled. "Those who have money, they really celebrate," he said as he strung his kite on the grounds of a nearby park. "Poor people just enjoy whatever they can."

One way to do that, he explained, was to harvest their castaways. The rich would never run after their stray, defeated kites. The poor use them or sell them for themselves.

"People are so hungry for a festive occasion, for dancing, for music," said Akbar Alam, a shoe designer who went to see a performance by Lahore's traditional women dancers on Saturday night. "This is the one time when it's sort of O.K. to do all this in the open. So they go crazy."