AS SHE rushed in from school, Kshama had beads of sweat trickling down her cheeks. Her upper lips looked as if adorned with tiny diamonds under the sun. It was the afternoons sun, over the asbestos sheets sheltering her family, glowering at its hottest. Kamalas mother coaxed her not to drink water just after returning from the heat outside. But Kamala hears none of it.
Gulping down the cool water from an earthen pot in the only bedroom in her house, Kamala rushes outside clutching a five-rupee coin in her tiny hands. Joined by Sabu and Rehman who are the tiny tots in the locality, Kamala is headed towards the end of the street where she lives in L R Nagar. She needs to buy a green kite today, before her brother comes in.
Yesterday, Kshamas brother had tried beating her up because she had tangled his kite into a bunch of overhead electric wires while trying to fly it. The young kid doesnt want to invite her brothers wrath today.
A walk in the L R Nagar slums -one of the biggest slums of Bangalore and a home to thousands of migrant and underprivileged labourers apart from others, and one can see numerous mangled remains of multi-coloured kites hanging from electric poles and transmission wires. As reported by a leading newspaper in October last year, the slum stands as one of the highest complaint areas for electric wire disconnection due to kite threads cutting through them.
At the end of the street lies a tiny shop run by Ramesh and his family. Ramesh Galipatta Angadi (meaning Ramesh Kite Shop) sprawls in Kannada over a tiny make shift board above the shop. The shop houses numerous kites in different colours made out of various types of scrap, manja the thread used to fly a kite often covered with a layer of powdered glass to facilitate cutting through threads of other kites in a competition and various other kite making material.
Rameshs family has been selling kites for over two decades now. His dad had a provi! sions st ore on the same place which later gave way to their present occupation. The reason? Demand, says Ramesh. The kites are imported from Maharashtra and Orissa.
Well, sadly the demand that his father saw in kites long ago has depleted to a large extent but Ramesh remains unfazed.
Who says that no one flies these kites? I know of many shops in the city that sell them. In fact, during the months of December and January we specially bring in more kites from Dharavi, Mumbai and Gujarat. If the rich kids dont buy them, it doesnt worry me anymore. The children here still buy from us.
Akshata, a software engineer living in the National Games Village nearby smiles, If a passer-by comes and asks to direct him to L R Nagar, you can safely tell him to follow the kites.
Appropriate, dont you think? After all which other children do any of us see flying kites in the neighbourhood?
It is only in the festival of Sankranthi, a very important festival observed in India for celebrating a good harvest that people remember to engage in kite flying. In earlier days, come mid-January and one could witness drama with music on rooftops, crowds shouting sounding like war cries, the word kaateh (meaning cut in Hindi) sung out loud whenever a kiteis cut. The high pitched kaateh stood as a symbol of the celebration.
People from all religions irrespective of caste and creed, rich or poor enjoy the festival of kites. The ingenuity that involves making kites and flying them is almost a religion in itself, grown to the level of an art form, though it looks deceptively simple.
Not much of it is seen nowadays as many cases of accidental deaths of young boys falling off from terraces while flying kites have been reported.
One can still argue that open grounds could solve the problem, but our modern lifestyle which brings in iPads and PlayStations to childrens life curbs the urge to go out and play to a much larger extent. T! he incre ase in high rises in Indian cities also doesnt help the cause.
Ayush, 8-year-old student at Bangalore International School says, I love playing on my Sony PlayStation after I get back from school. I have never flown a kite so I dont know if I could fly a kite. I have seen National Geographic showing it as a part of our festival. They look nice".
Not to forget, this tremendously popular sport of the yesteryears, patang-bazi (as the art of kite flying is called in Hindi) has its own misgivings.
Rajamani, constable at Audugodi police station says the boys in the slums use Chinese manja and have caused many injuries in the past. The station has booked some culprits under the law for indulging in dangerous acts in the recent past.
Kites those triangular thin objects capable of soaring to the skies while still being tethered to the ground, the mascots of a childs playful heart and his subconscious desire to fly high. It is disheartening to see such a beautiful form of art giving in the hands of consumerism and video / computer games.
While you are reading this Ayush will be munching on a McMaharaja Burger busying his hands on a PlayStation console, feverishly killing a militant appearing on a 70 inch Plasma TV screen in front of him, somewhere in the plush apartments enclosed in an air conditioned room, silently denied of experiences his childhood demands from a playground.
And while you are reading this, Kshama and her brother fix their eyes up in the sky, eagerly following a green kite dancing to tunes of the manja tied to their hands, their dirty, naked feet run through the myriad lanes of L. R. Nagar and their echoing shouts keeping alive the dying art form of kite flying.
Gulping down the cool water from an earthen pot in the only bedroom in her house, Kamala rushes outside clutching a five-rupee coin in her tiny hands. Joined by Sabu and Rehman who are the tiny tots in the locality, Kamala is headed towards the end of the street where she lives in L R Nagar. She needs to buy a green kite today, before her brother comes in.
Yesterday, Kshamas brother had tried beating her up because she had tangled his kite into a bunch of overhead electric wires while trying to fly it. The young kid doesnt want to invite her brothers wrath today.
A walk in the L R Nagar slums -one of the biggest slums of Bangalore and a home to thousands of migrant and underprivileged labourers apart from others, and one can see numerous mangled remains of multi-coloured kites hanging from electric poles and transmission wires. As reported by a leading newspaper in October last year, the slum stands as one of the highest complaint areas for electric wire disconnection due to kite threads cutting through them.
At the end of the street lies a tiny shop run by Ramesh and his family. Ramesh Galipatta Angadi (meaning Ramesh Kite Shop) sprawls in Kannada over a tiny make shift board above the shop. The shop houses numerous kites in different colours made out of various types of scrap, manja the thread used to fly a kite often covered with a layer of powdered glass to facilitate cutting through threads of other kites in a competition and various other kite making material.
Rameshs family has been selling kites for over two decades now. His dad had a provi! sions st ore on the same place which later gave way to their present occupation. The reason? Demand, says Ramesh. The kites are imported from Maharashtra and Orissa.
Well, sadly the demand that his father saw in kites long ago has depleted to a large extent but Ramesh remains unfazed.
Who says that no one flies these kites? I know of many shops in the city that sell them. In fact, during the months of December and January we specially bring in more kites from Dharavi, Mumbai and Gujarat. If the rich kids dont buy them, it doesnt worry me anymore. The children here still buy from us.
Akshata, a software engineer living in the National Games Village nearby smiles, If a passer-by comes and asks to direct him to L R Nagar, you can safely tell him to follow the kites.
Appropriate, dont you think? After all which other children do any of us see flying kites in the neighbourhood?
It is only in the festival of Sankranthi, a very important festival observed in India for celebrating a good harvest that people remember to engage in kite flying. In earlier days, come mid-January and one could witness drama with music on rooftops, crowds shouting sounding like war cries, the word kaateh (meaning cut in Hindi) sung out loud whenever a kiteis cut. The high pitched kaateh stood as a symbol of the celebration.
People from all religions irrespective of caste and creed, rich or poor enjoy the festival of kites. The ingenuity that involves making kites and flying them is almost a religion in itself, grown to the level of an art form, though it looks deceptively simple.
Not much of it is seen nowadays as many cases of accidental deaths of young boys falling off from terraces while flying kites have been reported.
One can still argue that open grounds could solve the problem, but our modern lifestyle which brings in iPads and PlayStations to childrens life curbs the urge to go out and play to a much larger extent. T! he incre ase in high rises in Indian cities also doesnt help the cause.
Ayush, 8-year-old student at Bangalore International School says, I love playing on my Sony PlayStation after I get back from school. I have never flown a kite so I dont know if I could fly a kite. I have seen National Geographic showing it as a part of our festival. They look nice".
Not to forget, this tremendously popular sport of the yesteryears, patang-bazi (as the art of kite flying is called in Hindi) has its own misgivings.
Rajamani, constable at Audugodi police station says the boys in the slums use Chinese manja and have caused many injuries in the past. The station has booked some culprits under the law for indulging in dangerous acts in the recent past.
Kites those triangular thin objects capable of soaring to the skies while still being tethered to the ground, the mascots of a childs playful heart and his subconscious desire to fly high. It is disheartening to see such a beautiful form of art giving in the hands of consumerism and video / computer games.
While you are reading this Ayush will be munching on a McMaharaja Burger busying his hands on a PlayStation console, feverishly killing a militant appearing on a 70 inch Plasma TV screen in front of him, somewhere in the plush apartments enclosed in an air conditioned room, silently denied of experiences his childhood demands from a playground.
And while you are reading this, Kshama and her brother fix their eyes up in the sky, eagerly following a green kite dancing to tunes of the manja tied to their hands, their dirty, naked feet run through the myriad lanes of L. R. Nagar and their echoing shouts keeping alive the dying art form of kite flying.
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