Give It, Give It

Khadia roof · nine in the morning · wind out of the west and honest

Line out 40 m

Tension —

Rub 0

Cuts 0

Spares 7

Cursor low is KHEENCH — you're pulling. Cursor high is DHIL — you're giving. That's the whole thing. Hold it.

under the tank

Falguni, behind you, with the firki

No. No. Don't hug it. You're standing there hugging the line like it owes you money.

Look where he is. He came under you from the left and he's sitting under your line and he is sawing. That's all he's doing. He isn't strong, he isn't clever, he's just moving thread across your thread and yours is sitting still like a rope on a fence post. A still line is a thing to be eaten. Give it. Let your arm go up. Let it run off my forearms — I've got a hundred and forty on this firki and I will feed you all of it, just ask for it.

There. Feel that? The moment you gave, your kite fell off sideways — that's supposed to happen, that's the paper telling you it has no tail. It has nothing to hold it straight. It goes wherever the last pull pointed its nose, and if there's no pull it just tips over on one shoulder and slides. That's not it dying. That's it being a fighting kite. Now snap it. Short. From the elbow, not the shoulder, you're not drawing water. Ha! See how the nose came up and it shot? That's a full second of speed you bought with one pull.

What the thread actually is: ordinary cotton, three-ply, boiled in rice paste with powdered glass in it and dried on the terrace over two mornings. It doesn't cut by being strong. It cuts by sawing. Which means everything: the one who pays out is the one who is sawing, and the one who clamps down and pulls is the one being sawn. Not a rule of the game. A property of thread.

Where the sharpness lives

And it's not sharp everywhere, so stop grinning. The paste and the glass only went on the first forty or fifty metres — the stretch nearest the kite, the stretch that goes out first. Past that it's bare cotton off the reel because Bhavesh's uncle only sells you so much manja and none of us are made of money. So when you have thirty metres out and he crosses you high, near your kite, you are crossing him on the good part and you should be delighted. When you have a hundred and twenty out and he catches you low, down by the parapet where it's plain thread, you can saw at him all morning and all you'll do is polish his line for him.

Watch the number. If the rub is happening past your abrasive, take line IN and drag the crossing up into the sharp. Don't stand there.

The grey parapet you are leaning your hip against, with two paste stains on it — The parapet, at the level of your hip. Two paste stains on it that have been there since the twelfth and are not coming off.

The count, out loud, since eight

Taken by	Cuts	Lost
Falguni (mine, ask anyone)	6	2
You, so far, this morning	0	0
Bhavesh, two roofs over	4	5
Whoever is on the green kites	9	1

Nine. Nine, and he's not better than us, he just doesn't panic. He gives, he gives, he gives, and then when the other one starts hauling — because they always start hauling, everybody hauls when they're frightened — he holds for half a second and the other line does the work of cutting itself on his. That's it. That's the whole trick and I'm telling it to you for free and you're still standing there with your fist closed.

Open your hand. OPEN IT. Good — good — GOOD, that's him, that's HIM, look at it go, look at it TUMBLE —

All right. One. You have one. Don't get proud, that was mostly wind and it was mostly me feeding you at the right moment. Take some back in, you've got a hundred and ten out and everything you say takes half a second to reach the paper. Feel the belly in it? That sag is real weight — a hundred metres of wet-pasted cotton hanging in the air is not nothing, and every command you give has to travel the whole length of it before the kite hears you. Short line, quick kite. Long line, you're arguing with someone in another postal district.

Most crossings end with nobody cut. That's the truth of it and nobody says it because it's boring. The lines touch, they slide, they come apart, both kites carry on, and the roof shouts about something else. Out of maybe forty engagements this morning I've taken six and lost two and the rest just slid. So don't stand there tense every time somebody's thread brushes yours. Save it for when the hiss goes high.

Things I will keep saying until you do them

One. When you hear the hiss go up in pitch, that's not him winning, that's the two of you rubbing fast. Which of you is feeding the rub is what decides it. If you're the one paying out, high pitch is good news.

Two. A pull is short. Chhota. Like flicking water off your fingers. Anyone who winds up with the whole arm has already lost and is just making it official.

Three. There are seven left under the tank and I counted them at seven this morning and I will count them again at noon and I would like the number to still be interesting.

Four. Don't lean out past the parapet, Ma is on the stairs, and she can tell from the sound of your feet.

He's coming back. Green, high, from the right, he's got maybe sixty out. Give. GIVE. Not yet — not yet — now hold —