Kites II

Some more pictures of Kites in the Meerut sky on 'Basant panchami'.

In a kite crazy city, kites that fell and got stuck on this tree.

The lamp post is witness to all the kite flying.

This is what I used to do for my brother. In this case though the kid also flies his own kites since the family is quite kites crazy.

Everyone in his family is flying their own kites and probably have their own 'charkhis'

so, they fly

Uncleji trying to teach his grand daughter how to fly a kite. Failing. Just because you are on the roof in Meerut with a kite, it does not soar up. It is a learnt skill, you have to learn it.

I guess that is about kites for now.

Kites

Just colorful paper…two sticks holding the paper together…thread and human skill and the kites fly. They are a huge sport in India. In UP and especially Meerut, my home town, flying kites is very big. Not just flying them but also competing with each other in the sky and cutting the competing kite, called 'pench ladaana'.

They do become a very inexpensive way of expressing human creativity and source of pure joy when you see this piece of paper flying high up. I know now, that I actually flew kites in Meerut this basant panchami that why flying kites was more important for India's older generations than fighting wars with the colonial beast. It is sheer joy.

Cities like Meerut have a street which can be called the 'Kite Street'. It is that part of the old Meerut called 'Khairnagar'.

Though when I was young, I never got to fly kites, my brother was the one who controlled this activity while I would be standing behind him holding the 'char khi' on which the two kinds of threads 'sadda' and 'manjha' are wound.