Let's go fly a kite!

The morning of the 14th January 2011 was bright and crisp. The sky was its usual soft Indian blue- well…almost! Scattered like confetti high in the sky were hundreds and hundreds of kites, all flitting and fluttering colours of blue, red, gold, green, pink, orange and every other imaginable colour! The city of Ahmedabad was celebrating the festival of Uttaryan.



So, in Ahmedabad many of the houses are quite tall and have flat open roof tops, which during the summer time comes very useful because then everyone sleeps out side underneath the moon and stars for a cool nights sleep. And during the festival of Makar Sankranti, everyone climbs up the steps to their roof tops with friends and families to catch a good gust of wind that will take their kites up high into the sky! And that’s exactly what we did this year.

 Along with friends from Manav Sadhna, Gramshree and family members we all went to Virenbhai’s house- one of the founders of Manav Sadhna. As we made our way up the staircase to the roof of his house, I could here the sound of "Tere mast mast do nein" blasting from speakers above us. It was a party on the roof! We found ourselves in the midst of friends who pushed steaming hot bowls full of channa and sev into our hand with the instructions to “Eat first, play later!”
It was so good- Virenbhai had brought the gas cooker up onto the roof so that we could cook up the channa and also make chai! Aswell as the channa and sev there was tal sakri and mumra no ladoo, and also bags of guavas and boar! Excellent food.

So, with our bellies full I was itching to have a go at flying a kite. A few of the boys had already got theirs in the air and they were flying them- apparently easily- so I swapped places with Ajaybhai and had a go. I thought I would just have to hold it, but no! The kite started to fall down pretty much straight away and Ajaybhai told me to keep tugging it and occasionally allow more string to go so that it would go higher and higher. It was very cool. Occasionally someone else’s kite from another rooftop came close towards ours, and then we would attempt to cut the other kite! You see, the string that is prepared for kite flying is coated with a mixture of paint and glass powder which makes the string strong and sharp so that it cuts through the air, and when the kites come in contact with another kite and crosses paths, there is a competition to see whose string cuts the other first. And then once one of them has been cut and the kite is cut loose everyone cheers and yells at the top of their voices!

This went on for the whole day until it started to get dark and we could no longer see the kites. And that’s when the fireworks start! There wasn't nearly as much as at Diwali time- but when there is something to celebrate- and there nearly always is in India- you’re bound to have some fireworks! As it gots darker still people started to send lanterns into the sky from their rooftops. From where we were we could see the light of lanterns from all around us getting smaller and smaller as they rose higher and higher into the sky. It looked beautiful- I've uploaded the video of our lantern onto facebook. It was such a nice way to spend the day!