Signs of Spring

Earlier this week, after a two-decade ban, the annual kite flying festival of Basant, marking the pending arrival of spring, returned to the Pakistani skies.

The danger of having glass and metal infused in kite strings to make them more competitive in the air led to injuries and fatalities in the 2000s, forcing the government to legislate against a centuries-old tradition that has been celebrated across Punjab and beyond long before any border existed.

During my trip to East Punjab, India, in January 2023, I caught an inter-city Uber from Ludhiana to Chandigarh and watched out of the car window as kites flew above villages, tractors and train tracks. Teenagers walked by with kites tucked under their arms. It was Basant.

I had timed my visit this way because my Dad’s last memory of living in India as a four-year-old, before my grandparents moved him and his brothers to London, was of looking up from the rooftop of their family home at a sky covered in kites.

Share

Within minutes of my first visit to Ludhiana, when I was 14, in December 2005, my cousin plonked me on his motorbike, sped us through the honking streets to a patang wala, a kite craftsman, and asked me to pick one of his creations from the selection lying on the concrete floor.

Returning to his home, ascending to the roof, he tied the kite to a long roll of string wrapped around a charkhi, or handle. He warned me to hold it lightly so that it didn’t slice my palm, and guided it up from one air pocket to the next until it was hundreds of metres away. He fought competitors from distant neighbourhoods until our kite was beheaded. We watched it tumble down towards the cityscape.

During my trip to West Punjab, Pakistan, in April 2023, I noticed the watercolour paintings of Dr Ajaz Anwar, depicting the Basant celebrations of his childhood, hanging from the inner-walls at each of the gates into Androon Lahore, the Walled City. As we passed them, my host explained Basant’s ban with sadness. The paintings were a subtle nod to its lost history.

Which is why seeing videos of its return on social media brought a smile to my face as I commuted to work through London’s grey, dreary streets.

Of course, signs of spring are starting to show much closer to home, too.

Earlier this week, my wife and I parked up near Wandsworth Park, near Putney Bridge, to walk along a stretch of the Thames that we used to frequent in our early-twenties. The trees were gangly and bare, the river at high tide, the wind frosty. There has been a lot of talk, even by British standards, about the constant rain since the beginning of 2026.

We are not out of winter yet.

But there were daffodils. Lots of them. It’s been too easy to focus on getting through the bleakest time of year and forget that very soon it will end.

Colour is returning to the English capital city.

It feels strange but fitting to be writing these words during such a limbo state in my life: the wait to become a father.

I have to keep working my 9-5, but also doing mundane things like cooking, exercising and watching television, holding onto the awareness that my whole life is about to change in an instant. At once trying to enjoy the final days of freedom and gearing up for everything to be turned upside-down.

Every morning the sun wakes me up at a more convenient time and stays up until my return commute. The birds are tweeting and I just noticed glimpses of purple and orange in the flower beds outside my office window.

New life is near.

Share