Fly Away

After more than 30 years I spent 17th September or Biswakarma Puja in Kolkata. Ever since I came to Kolkata as a nine-year old this day has been a red-letter day for me. I had fallen in love with kites in Delhi but as a kid most of my efforts at that age nose-dived into the ground. In Kolkata I had first tried to fly kites from the balcony of our flat on the third floor. My mother worried that I would tip over gave me permission to go to the roof above the fourth floor, and it was like being in a child’s heaven. Getting the kite to soar up with the lightest lift or ‘dharai’ from my brother was easy. I learnt how to balance the two wings by adding a small twist paper to one or bending the bow stretched across so that the kite wouldn’t tilt and loop. The other important skill that I quickly picked up was to repair kites with paper and rice, since we were still novices and would damage many kites. 

We had come to Kolkata in June, if I remember correctly and September came swiftly. I vividly remember looking into a sky full of multi-coloured kites and the cry ‘Vo Katta’ resounding across the roofs. For the next ten or more years, this was the day I look forward to most as childhood merged into adolescence. As I grew older we got the ‘manjha’ or glass impregnated kite string, and kites from ‘Foriapukur’ near Hatibagan. One year we even tried making manjha, and even though it was great fun running the glass-shard impregnated gum on the kite string wound around two electric poles, the result was not satisfying. The ‘tana’ manjha and ‘chara’ manjha from ‘Foriapukur’ were far superior. As children, we couldn’t handle the pull of bigger kites but as we grew older we aspired to the bigger sizes. Biswakarma puja was the day to get the bigger ‘dutey’ or double-sized kites. Kites for Biswakarma pujo had to be of different designs, each of which had separate names. There was the simple bi-coloured ‘pet-kata’ and ‘ghoyela’, the single streaked ‘mombatti’ the elaborately patterned ‘mukhpora’ or ‘chandiyal’ and many others that I can’t remember any more. 

Dueling with other kites was the main fun of Biswakarma pujo. We counted how many kites we had bought, how many we had defeated in a duel or ‘pyanch’, how many drifting kites had been collected as they slowly floated down. The most exciting and the highly skilled manoeuver was to catch a drifting kite by deftly looping your own string, around the cut string of the drifting kite, and bring it gently home. Every duel with a neighbours, kite was keenly watched and cheered by respective friends’ groups. Each duel ended with a loud chorus of ‘Vo-Kat-ta’ – a cry which was both a celebratory cheer and jeering of the loser. There were different ways in which these three syllables would rend the air, sometimes the emphasis was on the first syllable, sometimes on the second. 

In later years, I flew kites in Varanasi, Lucknow and even in Almora and Ahmedabad, but by that time I was an adult. I found the fervour of kite flying in Ahmedabad on Makar Sankranti (in mid-January) rivalling that of Biswakarma pujo of my childhood in Kolkata. The day is known as Uttarayani in Gujarat and kite-flying is done enfamille. In Varanasi, the way in which young boys would catch the drifting kites that floated onto the Ganga by steering small boats was most exciting to watch. In Lucknow kite-flying on the banks of Gomti was reminiscent of the times of the nawabs. Men, both younger and older, many dressed in kurta and pajama, would fly their kites on the banks of the river close to freshly laundered ‘chikankari’ garments. Each team of kite flyers would have at least one person who would be flying the kite, and another holding the spindle, or latai as we called them in Bangla. They would come in their two wheelers, with a large square bag of kites and a kit-bag with latais and manjha. They would fly their kites high in the sky and their duels would take place above the domes of the mosques and mausoleums of the Chowk area about a kilometre away. Once I took my daughter and her friends to the banks of the Gomti and started flying kites. Politely and with a Lakhnawi ‘andaz’ they shooed us away. 

Once I visited Lahore few days after Basant or the spring festival. Basant also called Basanto Panchami in India and is celebrated famously as the Basanto Utsav in Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan. In Lahore too, the entire city was decked in yellow and festooned with kites. The people of Lahore fly kites with a rare passion on Basant. The government has tried to restrict and ban it for the ostensible health risk of getting seriously injured by kite strings. But I am informed it continues to be a passion and many have even in jail on the charge of flying kites. It rained heavily on the day of Biswakarma pujo this year, and I saw no kites in the sky this year. Children today probably have many more things to occupy their minds and time than the simple pleasures of flying kites. 

For those who like flying kites like me - some interesting readings 

For more details on kite flying in Kolkata 

History of Kite flying in India 

For more on kite flying in Gujarat 

Some recent news on kite flying in Lahore