It’s 14th January, and it's Sankrant, the kite flying festival in India. I miss flying kites here in Minnesota. Since I was a kid I used to wait eagerly for Jan 14th. My excitement would in fact start right after Diwali (sometime in Oct/Nov). I used to plan a trip with my dad to a kite shop to get kites and manja. I like the Indian fighter kites style of flying, as you would have guessed from my blog name.
I would go for a medium size paper model of fighter kites. These are very versatile, can be maneuvered very well and very responsive, yet strong. On the manja (string) front there are usually two broad categories – thin and thick. This choice of which type of manja to select depends on your kite fighting strategy. And there are two basic strategies – gashit (pull) and dheel ( let go).
I like the ghasit (pull) mode, you usually attack the kites that are flying in front of you. You swoop in from under their manja and pull really hard in that swoop. What this does it cuts the other person’s manja, you really have to pull very hard and vigorously to create enough friction to cut the other person’s kite.
The other mode of kite fighting is to let the kite go and let the wind do its job. In this mode, you usually attack the other person from the top and let your manja go (dheel de).
Once we had bought our kites and manja, sometime in December, then I am anxious to start the preparations for Jan 14th. We usually used to get close to 100 paper kites. The next step was to tie the kanni (Stringed) to the kites. Once all kites are ready, I could not wait for Sankrant.
On the day of Sankrant, I used to get up real early, like 6.00 a.m., get ready and head to the terrace. In the mornings, in Bombay, there is usually very little breeze, but the breeze in the mornings blows from East to West. So there were some real enthusiasts who would fly in the mornings. You really need great skill to fly in that mild breeze. I used to love it.
By about 11.00 a.m. the wind would start to change direction and then start blowing from West to East. Now people really got their kites up a going. I used to grab a quick lunch and back again to the terrace. By now some friends and family would have arrived and the real kite fighting starts. You don’t care if a small child is flying or a grandmother or grandfather is flying or a girl is flying for the first time. If your kite is in the air, it game for a fight. It sounds kind of brutal now, but we got immense pleasure from cutting as many kites as we could. Every time you someone else’s kite you shouted from your top of your voice – Kay Po Che. (I cut your kite.)
At times you would loose your own kite in the fight, we would reel in the manja and get another one in the sky as soon as possible. This used to go on for the whole day and I just loved it. At the end of the day I would be tanned black and my hands would be bleeding due to the manja. It was worth it.
Friends and family used to get together in the evenings for a cup of tea, some teel ladoo ( sweet sesame balls) and talk about their exploits during the day. Now that I am in Minnesota I have not been back to India for Sankrant for a long time. But I am traveling to Houston this weekend where they have a kite flying festival. Stay tuned for photos and my report on that festival.
