Balraj Khanna

Balraj Khanna once said his real education started after midnight, when he’d sketch the Bombay street scenes flickering past his taxi window. He kept a box of colored pencils in the glove compartment and drew until the meter ran out. The eye-level kite battles in Patang Bazi (1987) aren’t just bright shapes; they’re the exact moment the monsoon wind lifts paper from rooftops.

A friend told me Khanna once stitched a whole kite himself to get the curve right. Look up Patang Bazi and you’ll see Mumbai rise off the canvas like a living thing.