Of kites, a Book, and a Movie

Someone asked me yesterday about the meaning of the kite in my site’s banner. Well, the answer is I have always been fascinated by kites! I love to fly kites. I enjoy the uplifting feeling from holding the kite strings and watching in awe as the kite pulls itself upwards triumphantly against the wind. If only I could fly kites anytime I feel dispirited, I would readily do so since kite-flying can be my best resource of upliftment. But then I would need an open space with no trees and electric wires nearby, plus a strong wind to carry my kite up high into the sky. And I would need a kite that can fly and respond obediently to my urgings on its string.

Kites too have always been the favorite toy of my youth during summertime and in the month of December in the Philippines when the wind blows relatively stronger than the rest of the year. My adventures as well as misadventures with kites will forever be part of my growing up years when computer games were still alien in my hometown of San Jose in the province of Nueva Ecija.

I have made and flown all kinds of kites ever since I was a young lad. Starting from the lowly “boca-boca” fashioned out of plain paper and made to fly by means of a spool of thin thread filched from my mother’s sewing kit (!); to the medium-sized “sapi-sapi” with its colorful flaps, fins, and tail; and all the way to the huge and strong “sarangola” that can make sounds with its “paugong” as it dives and then climbs up high against the wind… Yes, to this day, I have kept my love affair with kites going while I still dream of owning and flying the most colorful and beautiful kite I ever saw at a store in Honolulu, Hawaii last year.

It is predictably the kite too that attracted me to buy, read and enjoy the very first novel of an untested Afghan-American writer named Khaled Hosseini. The book is “The Kite Runner”, a beautifully-written masterpiece by this hitherto unknown author and has since become one of my favorites. The book, to my delight, has also become a smashing best-seller and has recently been made into a movie.

I saw the movie version the other day courtesy of my daughter Dana who patiently downloaded it for me in her computer. I still maintain that the book is a better version, but the movie itself has its own merits for me personally. For one, it has put faces into the names I could previously only imagine. There were too the breath-taking sceneries, the haunting musical background, and, of course, the beautiful and exciting kite-flying scenes which I enjoyed immensely. The main protagonists – the two boys and the father – delivered very credible acting. And the movie kept close to the novel’s original story line – a story of friendship and betrayal, of father and son relationship, and of the effects of war on people amid the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

I realize as I write these comments on the book and the movie that I am probably not too objective in my assessment given my predilection for kites. But I will still say go ahead and read the book, then watch the movie or even the other way around. It is all worth it even if you have never flown a kite before and do not like kites for any reason at all!