MY heart missed a beat when I learnt that after years, the festival of Basant would be celebrated with full fervor next year.

Having lived through 80 years of my life, I must admit I have mixed feelings about this news, let me explain why.

Living in Gujranwala with my grandparents as a child was a lot of fun.

Together with children of other groups, I enjoyed seeing enthusiasm among people who impatiently waited for spring to arrive.

Basant, for me was fascinating as it meant lots and lots of kites of all shapes and sizes and colours decorating the sky. Muslims, Hindus, Christians and especially the Sikhs were in a joyous frame of mind, despite the fact that all of us were living under the British. Even the poor and lower-middle class communities were happy as the British maintained law and order.

But alas! It all seemed to change with the passage of time. We managed to get independence and were happy for a short period of time. Even in that brief period our elders could not stoppraising the British.

For me, time just flew past and I returned home in my late twenties. Basant had been rightly banned for multiple reasons.

Some kite strings have now become deadly because of metallic material and our common folk have resorted to motor cycle use as a cheaper mode of transport, especially with their families. These factors have, unfortunately resulted in the death of many young, innocent children when a stray kite with a metal string cut their vessels of the neck resulting in sudden, heavy, uncontrollable bleeding.

None of us parents and grandparents want that to be repeated, do we? If most of our people want it to be revived, then it is the duty of our government to make absolute and foolproof arrangements so that such deadly incidents never surface again.

M. Masud Butt Lahore