“I know how to fly,” the kite says.

She stood among a small group of girls, must be a college student waiting for the bus. Was she a kite? I am never conclusive, never closer to satisfaction whenever I think about the meaning and connection between the God, life and ourselves. And, I am not bored of contemplating it whenever the opportunity arises. It was only a few minutes, but she gave me an opportunity to delve into these thoughts.

For many of us, our first experience with flying a kite might have been simply holding the string and running, allowing the kite to chase us from a distance of two or three meters. Of course, when we began kite fighting, we knew that we were playing one of the games that required a multifaceted skill set. We wanted to master them all, from making kites to manja thread, to dheel, to street fights.

Imagine a kite festival, surrounded by kites of various colours and sizes decorating the venue. There are kites ready to take flight. There are children playing with kites, crashing a few accidentally or for fun. Some kites fly very low, while some soar high into the sky. It’s a spectacle in the sky as the kites fly in clusters, moving into each other’s paths, playing cutting games, and filling the sky with vibrant colours. The skill level of the kite flyer, the wind, the string, the knot, and the kite’s design all determines what the kite can do in the sky and its eventual return to the ground.

Now, let’s envision ourselves as kites and God assigns angels to fly us. The kite may feel it’s having fun, making moves, controlling its height and so on, but the real action and fun are happening elsewhere, for reasons unknown to the kites. Or is it not? Does the angel dictate our actions based on their own skill? Or does God assign angels based on what He wants us to do in the sky? Of course, the large number of “whys” are possibly “whys” forever.

This scenario is not unfamiliar to me. I’ve witnessed girls fainting on buses or at bus stops. Almost always, the reason is the same — skipping breakfast plus something else. One of the hardest parts of witnessing someone faint is the controlling of my thoughts in those few seconds — between fainting and waking up. For a bystander, a dead and a fainted person look the same. That’s why I wondered whether her angel was less skilled and letting that kite to descend prematurely. No, it was just a momentary dip; some adjustments were made, and the kite was rising and flying again, perhaps believing that it knew how to fly.