Imagine my surprise when scrolling down my Facebook timeline recently I came across a picture which portrayed basant in full swing -- the sky filled with colourful kites. I assumed this was an old picture, from the festive basant days, when it was okay to fly kites in Lahore. That was until I read the text, "This is Rawalpindi, right now."

As much as I wanted to be happy for the people of Rawalpindi, I couldn’t help feel a twinge of jealousy.

As a Lahori, there are several things that I have always associated the city with, as if they are a ‘given’ in Lahore. For instance, good food, shopping options and, well, basant. I mean, nobody celebrates basant like a Lahori!

The fact that Lahore has empty skies in spring nowadays is just sad. As a kid, I remember we would invest in the best kites, the most brilliantly coloured one, the biggest one. We would keep it in top notch condition; a proper space would be made for the safe keeping of the kites along with the dors and an unlimited amount of chaypi, God forbid, we damage the kites.

Families would gather at one particular house or reserve space at hotel tops to enjoy the festival. Everyone would dress up in vibrant clothes matching the festivities. There would be music, food, friendly competition and lots of laughter. Whenever someone would take down another person’s kite, the children would run to claim it as their win. Such was the spring of Lahore, the infinite joy and laughter of it.

The festivities back then were not limited to rooftops; the entire city would become celebratory, with the Canal Road and Main Boulevard streetlights adorned with kites, billboards plastered with advertisements promoting basant.

Alas, gone are those days! Today, spring arrives quietly and we go about our businesses like always. Most of the children today have no idea what basant was or what it felt like when people screamed "Bo Kata" or how popular the song by Fariha Pervaiz was at one point of time. The terms would only make us laugh.

The ban on basant is one of the most senseless things ever. People argue that it was a deadly festival but forget that it wasn’t like that always. Instead of banning the harmful chemical dor and restricting kite flying to the parks, the government saw it fit to rob everyone of basant’s festivities.

The Grinch stole Christmas, in our case it stole basant.

Basant was one occasion for which people travelled from different cities to Lahore, family and friends would get together to celebrate and share the joy. It was also economically beneficial for the community in the kite-making business. Majority of the businesses have now shut down.

It seems like every day it is becoming difficult to find occasions to be happy about. This year again, the rooftops of Lahore would be empty, the sky would not be filled with colours, there would be no music and no merriment. Basant used to belong to Lahore and Lahore yearns to be festive again.