When my dad touched down in Delhi for the first time in over 30 years, he must have had a lot on his mind. We wandered his old haunts for hours — they were unrecognizable due to rapid urbanization. But his true mission was to find the Indian fighting kites he’d loved flying as a child.

And so he did, buying 20 of them from a shop in Jaipur, packing them tightly with paper and tape to bring them back to the States.

When the pandemic forced my family into quarantine and uncomfortable proximity a few months later, my dad, who hates sitting still, dragged his children out to the park to fly his kite.

My brothers, cousin and I complained plenty when the kite first came out. It seemed boring to observe someone else fly a barely visible object. But my dad taught us how to tease the kite into incredible heights and watch it soar, and I came to enjoy those outings.

It was peaceful. My father and I set aside our constant squabbles to enjoy discovering the kite’s new path. Depending on who’d accompanied him that day, he’d name the kite accordingly. I distinctly remember the only one he’d named after me crashing dramatically into the ground — to my morbid delight.

I find kite-flying meditative, but Medill first-year Ashley Dong thinks it’s just plain romantic.

Growing up near San Francisco, her family would go to the Marina District of the city and fly kites every summer.

“In the moment when we were little kids, it was definitely really fun,” Dong says. “But looking back, it’s even more meaningful because my dad would spend hours with us just sitting there.”

Dong says growing up, her parents were always busy, including during the summer when they would juggle work with childcare. 

They don’t have their original kites anymore, but Dong’s father bought her a Costco pocket kite that she whips out on windy days at the beach with friends. But it’s different now.

“As we grow older, we lose that sort of romanticism, for lack of better words, to be able to really be fully present in the moment of flying a kite and to so enjoy watching a piece of fabric flying around in the air,” Dong says.

My dad cherishes his old memories of flying kites. Every Indian Independence Day, August 15, he says he would launch his kite into the air from his roof to battle with the kids across the way in the village. Apparently, he wasn’t very good, but that doesn’t taint the memories.

Following the end of quarantine, my dad and I stopped going out to fly the kites, his life busier than before. But when I ask why not spend an afternoon in a park, he just wryly says his daughter isn’t there to fly it with him. A little under 2,000 miles away, I want that peace back. I’ll drag him out this time, name the kite Vikas and collapse laughing when it fails by my hand.