“Hold it gently – and then let it go”, my father said to me as he handed me the string of the kite he had been flying.

It was August 15th, Indian Independence Day; the day that thousands of Indians take to their roofs to compete in an unofficial kite flying competition. I looked at the sky – full of colorful kites in different shapes, patterns and sizes. The large terrace of my apartment building was full of kids – some accompanied by their parents, some with friends their own age – flying their kites. Most girls were standing on the side & watching the show. But for boys – it was serious business. They were in it for the kill. The cotton string of the kite called “Manjha” is coated with powdered glass or a similar abrasive & designed to cut the strings of rival kites. Every now & again I would hear a big cheer & applause which meant a boy from our terrace had successfully cut the string of a kite that belonged to a boy from another terrace. And then there were groans when “our side” lost; which meant the string of a kite belonging to a boy from our terrace was cut off by someone from another terrace, this was usually followed by loud voices as senior kite-fliers; the experts if you will, schooled the young ones on making a losing maneuver. Kite flying requires skill and August 15th is the day when Indian kite-fliers go to their World Cup!

I was a novice when it came to flying a kite. I seem to recall I was fascinated by the sport and wanted to learn. Just like I had wanted to learn Cricket. But in 1980s India, girls were taught neither Cricket nor Kite-flying – those were boy sports! My father who did know how to fly a kite seldom flew it; he was not very interested in sports – maybe because he was the intellectual kind or maybe because he had no son to teach sports to but only daughters. I had occasionally summoned courage & approached some of the older boys to teach me but the best offer I had been given was to hold the spool of string while a boy flew the kite. This was the first time anyone was offering me to fly the kite, I was excited and eager to show my father that his daughter; a girl could also fly a kite. So what if I had had no training?

“Ouch” I exclaimed as I enthusiastically tried to grab the string from my father and promptly got a nasty cut on my palm from its abrasive coating. The wound drew blood immediately.
“I told you to hold it gently. Now look what you have done.” My father took the string back from my hand, annoyed at my inept handling of the string. “Now go downstairs and ask your mother to put something on the cut.”

Ashamed, in pain from the wound and with tears stinging my eyes, I ran down the stairs to my apartment. My mother busy in the kitchen turned to me & saw my face. “What happened?” she asked. “I tried to fly the kite but I didn’t do it right,” I responded and started crying. “Oh poor thing, it’s ok, come here, come here. “ My mother dropped what she was doing, grabbed a pain ointment from her first-aid closet and took us both to the dining table. There she sat down close to me and applied the medicine to my wound while singing a little Hindi poem she used to sing often “Come my darling, come my heart, you are my silver, you are my gold, you are my key, you are my lock, you are my heartstring, you are my everything.” Words that neither rhymed well nor made much sense but somehow always managed to make me feel better. Words that I had almost entirely forgotten in the 30 years since I have been motherless. Words that somehow came back to me this year as I became a mother myself – for the first time – to our two exchange student-daughters, Sophie & Iara, who through the course of their year with me & my husband became so close to us that they started calling us Mummy & Daddy.

I have never remembered my mother as much as I have in the past couple of years, nor have I missed her as much, nor have I channeled her as much. Both my husband and our student-daughters look at my mother’s photos and tell me I look just like her – a compliment to me of course since she was a beautiful person – both inside and out. During the course of this year my own student-daughters have looked at me – their host-mom for love and support, for calming their anxieties and healing their wounds, for wiping their tears and putting emotional ointments on their abrasions. And through it all I have spontaneously channeled my mother behaving quite like her, it was as if the mother inside me lay dormant all this time and came alive when the time came. Like the aliens buried underground in their tripods in War of the Worlds! 😀

My joy was short-lived – as almost all joys are. I have heard friends say they blinked and their children turned from babies into adults. In our case, that blink went even faster. The year flew by and our student-daughters returned back to their home countries a few days ago, but not before many tears were shed, hugs & kisses exchanged and promises made to keep in touch forever. Our home is quiet and our hearts miss them. I do not know when we will see each other again. I do not know if the love that shines so bright in us right now will continue to shine even as we are separated by space & even time.

Then my friend Jennifer brings me a children’s story that I had never read before. It is called “The Invisible String” – the mother in that story tells her children that people who love each other are connected by a very special but invisible string made of love. We can feel this string deep in our hearts, and we somehow know that we are connected to the ones we love even when they are physically not with us.

And I remember the kites flying high in the sky and my father’s words reminding me to
“hold it gently – and then let it go”.

Swati is a loved wife & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children! More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com