A Sky full of Kites

If you have a friend who grew up in Jaipur, you would have probably heard these stories for many years.

It is the day we miss home.

The kite-flying day.

It is the day we miss our sun-soaked terraces and the nip of winter breeze that lifted the kites as high as the aeroplanes (that was the target anyway). The day we miss the open spaces and the camaraderie of a thousand bits of paper intermingling in the skies, falling down, being chased like trophies, and carefully restored with homemade glue to fly again.

This is was the day in the sun. Thousands of kids (and much, much older kids) stayed up the previous night, tying the ‘tan’-the thread tied in a triangle to ensure the best flying angle for the kites. We lived on the terrace all day, eating pakoras in the deafening noise from a hundred loudspeakers and yet too focussed on that tiny coloured rhombus in the sky to hear anything. And when the sun went down, and the kite could no longer be seen, we flew them with candles.

We came down only when the chill of the evening reminded us that it was still January (or moms made us come down threatening us with all sorts of dire consequences). And then we fell asleep with aching limbs, leaping in our dreams to catch the falling kites.

There was so much science behind mending a kite, shredding non-repairable ones to fix others, tying the ‘tan’, the calculation behind the proportion of the different strings the maanja and sadda to be used, the dynamics of pulling the string at the right speed to cut through another and of course trying to run faster than the wind while estimating where the fallen kite will fall and to catch it before the others.

There was so much passion. The kites had names depending on the patterns and the colours. You would starve, stay parched, and not go to the loo for hours, for the thrill of feeling the kite tug the string through your fingers.  You could be clobbered for letting a favourite kite get sniped. And catching a falling kite was worth bruises and knocks and at times even broken bones.

You think that’s crazy for a flimsy bit of coloured paper? Spend 14^th January on a terrace in Jaipur!