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.