Man From Matunga

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January 18, 2006

Kati Patang

This has been published in today's Mumbai Mirror.

The crease between the middle and distal phalanges of my right index finger digit is burning and hurting a bit, because of a small cut, along the outer aspect, which like the black ink on the nail during voting time, is my mark of having flown kites on Sankrant.

The “maanjha”, because of the embedded fine glass, cuts and cuts badly. As a kid, I often used to fly kites with a Band-Aid around the index finger tip and many older kids I knew had developed calluses, due to the chronic friction with the “maanjha”. Today, I guess, you would only find cuts, since no one in Mumbai, and especially in Matunga, seems to fly kites except on Sankrant.

Last Saturday, the whole family was up on the terrace; we were trying to get the kids and some of their neighboring friends involved in the kite-flying process as well. Kids being kids, they were excited to begin with, but when they realized that they couldn’t fly the kites on their own, their interest kept waxing and waning. Whenever someone “kataoed” our kite, they would suddenly get animated (we lost 4 kites), and when we let them hold the kites or give some “dheel”, they would be fine, but otherwise, they would go back to playing their silly games.

The worst thing about losing the kites was that not even once did I see the “pech” happen. Talk about loss of practice. Also, each time we lost our kite, we had to draw the “maanjha” back in and the kids were terrible at handling the “firkees”. As kids, we used to palm the two handles of the “firkees” in our two hands and then start rocking the palms to roll in the “maanjha” as fast as possible – the aim was to be the “fastest firkee drawer” around. The current generation of kids have no clue about how to handle these instruments, and eventually, after each kite-loss, my father-in-law or I had to take over the “firkee”.

Just after dusk, we let up our first lantern – a paper one with a candle inside. We tied it to one of our kites that was already up. It looked gorgeous, snaking its way up slowly as we gave more “dheel”, but no sooner had it reached a good height (and was the only lantern in the sky), someone cut the kite it was attached to and we lost the kite and the lantern. Luckily, one of the American, LED-lit contraptions, which we had attached to another one, stayed put and we managed to get that one safely back.

Every other terrace in the locality had families flying kites and just before dusk, there were more than 20 kites in the air. Of course, this number is miniscule compared to the situation in Bhuleshwar and Ahmedabad, but for Matunga, 20 kites over Manikrao Lotlikar Marg was a good number.

The kids of course, kept asking why we were flying kites on this particular day. Thank God for Google and the ability to get quick answers. Obviously Makar Sankrant is the day of transition, from when the days become longer and the nights shorter, etc… and is also celebrated as Lohri in Punjab and Pongal in the South, but what I couldn’t find easily was the relationship between kite-flying and Makar Sankrant. Unless, it just started as an excuse to celebrate and to meet up on terraces.

Posted by bhavinj at January 18, 2006 02:43 AM

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