Basant Begins

Metroblogging Lahore:

The Basant and Jashan-e-Baharan (Celebrations of the Spring) festivities are taking off in the city starting from today.

And then we get this:

Lahore Police has announced a cash reward of Rs.5000 [US$85] for those who report any violation of laws on kite-flying.

Idiots.

Comments

[Alex]

Actually from what I understand (and please, correct me if I'm wrong) people in Pakistan have this weird tradition of kite-fighting, where they'll cover their kites, and the strings, in things like broken glass, metal spikes, razor blades, etc, and then try to take out other peoples kites. From what I hear it's lead to quite a few deaths, so I really couldn't blame the government for wanting to control it.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

You're correct about the kite fighting. Such "competitions" result in a lot of dangerously sharp threads hanging around densely populated areas.

However, I don't think the solution to this problem is to ban all kite-flying.

There are responsible Pakistanis who don't go to the extreme. I've flown kites in Lahore with my cousins; no-one got injured. It's a fun activity that also helps the poor kite sellers.

Also, there is an Islamist angle: any activity that takes "time away" from Islam is considered uncouth. Basant has distinctly non-Islamic roots which also pisses off the Islamists.