The Kite Who Was Afraid of the Wind

Aarvi, a young Indian girl, gently handles the bright red kite, Momo, in her sunlit bedroom, establishing the characters.

In a small house at the end of Neem Tree Lane lived a kite named Momo. He was bright red with a long, curly tail, and he hung on a nail in Aarvi's room, waiting for the day she would finally take him outside.

On a very windy Sunday, Aarvi brings Momo to the terrace. The wind is strong, causing the clothesline to rattle and Momo to tremble in fear.

That day came on a Sunday morning, windy and bright. Aarvi lifted Momo carefully off the nail. "Today's the day," she said. "We're going to fly!"

But the moment they stepped onto the terrace, a gust of wind rushed past, rattling the clothesline and flinging a dry leaf clear across the sky. Momo trembled on his string.

"I don't like this," he whispered. "The wind is loud, and strong, and it wants to push me around. What if it throws me into a tree? What if it tears my tail? I would rather stay on the nail where it's safe."

Aarvi knelt down so she was eye to eye with him. "Momo, the wind isn't your enemy," she said. "It's the only reason you can fly at all."

"That's easy for you to say," said Momo. "Your feet are on the ground."

Aarvi laughed, but not unkindly. "You're right. I don't know what it feels like to be lifted by something so much bigger than me. But I do know this — I've watched a hundred kites from this terrace, and the ones who fought the wind, who twisted away and tried to stay low and safe, they're the ones who spun out and crashed. The ones who flew highest were the ones who turned and faced it, and let it carry them."

Momo looked out at the sky. It did seem awfully big. "And if I get it wrong?"

"Then your tail gets tangled, and I run over and untangle it, and we try again," said Aarvi. "That's what I'm here for."

Aarvi runs, letting out the string. Momo is caught in a powerful updraft and begins to climb rapidly past the clothesline and the green neem tree.

She didn't wait for him to feel brave. She simply ran, three quick steps, and let the string out. The wind caught Momo from underneath, so suddenly that he gasped — and then, instead of falling, he was rising. Up past the clothesline, up past the neem tree, up until Aarvi was just a small girl with her face turned to the sun.

For a moment, old fear crept back in. The wind pushed hard against him, and he thought: this is it, this is when I fall. But he noticed something strange — the harder the wind pushed, the higher he climbed. It wasn't trying to throw him down at all. It was the only thing holding him up.

"Oh," said Momo, and something in his chest that had been clenched tight for as long as he could remember finally let go. He stopped bracing against the wind and let himself lean into it instead. His tail streamed out behind him like a red ribbon, and for the first time, flying didn't feel like falling that hadn't happened yet. It felt like flying.

Momo is high in the clear blue sky, looking down. The neighborhood and the neem tree are small below, and the silver river is visible in the distance.

Below, Aarvi whooped and let the string out further, and Momo climbed higher still, past the water tank, past the neighbour's terrace, until he could see the whole of Neem Tree Lane laid out small and neat beneath him, and the river a silver thread in the distance, and clouds close enough to almost touch.

When the wind finally softened and Aarvi reeled him back in, gently, hand over hand, Momo came down laughing — a thing he hadn't known a kite could even do.

"Well?" said Aarvi, catching him against her chest.

"I was so busy being afraid of the wind," Momo said, "that I almost missed finding out it was the thing that could take me to the sky."

That night, back on his nail, Momo didn't feel like the same kite who had trembled on the terrace that morning. He still knew the wind could be strong, and sudden, and impossible to control. But he also knew, now, that the things that push against us the hardest are sometimes the very things that lift us highest — if only we stop bracing, and let ourselves lean in.

He couldn't wait for the next windy Sunday.