MY KITEMAN

 Niladri Chattopadhyay

He loved to fly kites.
Even he could make them.
They said he could make the kites talk and the paper-dots, up in the sky, conveyed his messages to the heights he always dreamt of.
He loved swimming too; almost an obsession with him, as he stayed close to the Ganges.
An average student of science, studies had never been his priority.
He had many friends, some of them being much older.
Then one day he yielded to smoking on some godfather's insistence.
It became a habit for the young adult who started changing.
He had a nephew around thirteen years younger but almost a friend.
The boy called him 'Kiteman' and imitated him as best he could.
His 'Kiteman' taught him how to fly kites and swim.
Sometimes he took his nephew to his 'addas'.
The young lad didn't like these men.
They looked haggard and only smoked and even drank.
He saw his dearest 'Kiteman' join them.
He felt bad...he even wept silently.
He felt a little distant and thus the young man slowly yet surely lost his biggest fan.
The boy went to meet him but not as often as he did.
Now his 'Kiteman' was a married man and the boy loved his 'mami' so much.
He would spend more time with mami than with his 'mama'.
The 'mama' thought his nephew grew older and did not enjoy his company any longer.
His drinking increased and the newly wedded couple fought a lot.
The boy wondered whether alcohol had a greater charm than a loving wife.
Then came Twinkle, their first child, a cute little thing.
'Kiteman' was incorrigible; always found amidst smoke and smell.
Even the new-born was a failure.
Alcohol and cigarette combo defeated all, every time, everywhere.
One day the boy, now an adult, got a call from his mami.
"Raja, can you come once?" "What happened mami?" The call had already ended.
The nephew rushed to his mama's place and found his little cousin shivering in fever…'104' the mercury showed.
And the girl's father lay unconscious immersed in alcohol!
The baby was attended to, but for the mother and the daughter the 'Man' was dead.
Thus, the boy's 'Kiteman' lost his family if at all he believed to have any ever!
Were it not for the two, Raja would never have liked to go to the house which was once for him more than his own home.
Years passed.
Now the alcoholic sexagenarian has lost all his nervous control and a patient of manic depression takes more drug than food.
He had only befriended booze and ignored all who idolized him. He lost his job, he beat his wife and one day his daughter eloped with an urchin.
And a suicide followed.
His nephew, heart-broken, could never fathom what went wrong with this man...once the finest of all!
Still lost all he had but could not leave his 'alcohol'!
The nephew hates kites ever since.