Thoughts on Basant from a reader

Zia from Islamabad writes:

Basant in Lahore has become an increasingly popular spring festival. People are loving it. Traditional passion aside, the rising enthusiasm for celebrating kite flying party reflects that people of fun-starved society like ours have more money to spend on a well packaged event of the year. From every angle of this important cultural event of Lahore, I’m all for it. I don’t understand why bother about the roots and origin of a festival as long as people are ready to make it as their cultural norm? Look how the people of Lahore have embraced, owned, nurtured and popularized it as a large scale public entertainment day! Lahore’s rapid development has a role to play in commercializing the event recently. Again I fail to comprehend why critics are perturbed over growing corporatization of basant as event attracts a sizeable mass appeal. If anything one should look at the number of people who get employment and the income generated to make Lahore a popular tourist attraction. Isn’t it impressive to note that billions of rupees are spent on a single day in Lahore alone. Admittedly the crass commercialization though has made it more of a rich man’s thing but still its practice with devotion in the inner city makes it everyone’s and everybody’s fun filled day. There is only one legitimate and serious concern and I do share it i.e. every year a number of people die as a result of coated thread. I agree that more needs to be done to ensure stringent regulation of material used on the kite flying days.