The Kite Maker of Chandni Chowk
Every January, as Makar Sankranti drew near, old Hameed's tiny shop in Chandni Chowk overflowed with colour. Sheets of tissue paper in crimson, saffron and turquoise hung from every hook, and the smell of freshly cut bamboo filled the narrow lane outside.
Hameed had been making kites since he was seven years old, taught by his father, who had learned from his own father before him. "A good kite," he would tell his young customers, "is not the one with the brightest colour. It is the one whose spine is cut so evenly that it needs no tail to fly straight."
These days, fewer children came to his shop. Many preferred the printed plastic kites sold in bigger stores, ready-made and cheap. Hameed did not resent them for it — he simply shrugged and kept cutting his bamboo, unhurried, as though the change outside his door had nothing to do with the work in his hands.
Yet every year, without fail, a few old customers returned. They were grown men and women now, bringing their own children to the same narrow shop, asking for the same careful, hand-cut kites their fathers once flew from the same rooftops.