Go fly a kite

There was a small window of opportunity when summer was just ending and the beginning of the monsoons which was the Kite season. This was the time when the sky was dotted with paper kites flown from playgrounds, roads, terraces and roofs.

And despite Marinagar not being so kite crazy; there were a few diehard fans, who not only brought joy to the onlookers but also introduced us to a whole new vocabulary.

The onset of kite season necessitated climbing onto the lofts to bring out the ‘firki’ with the old ‘manjha’. Then borrowing another firkin to unravel the manjha to check that the knots connecting the different types of manjha were tight and there were no ‘ghasras’ on the manjha.

Then was the trip to the kitewallah who sat next to Cafe Tarzan in a 3ft wide by 8ft high shop with huge firkis of coloured manjha above his head and layers of kites f all different colours arranged by size and price behind him. The popular buys for the Marinagar boys was the white ‘dhaga' which was bought in rolls and went onto the firkin first, then was the ‘badami’ the orange manjha coated with ground glass and the black ‘barik’ manjha that went last on the firkin. This fine manjha needed to be the sharpest at that is what was used in kite fights to cut the other kite.

Also important was the choice of the kites. While colour was not so important, one needed to check whether the bamboo strips were even and that the kite had balance. There was also the flexibility test of holding the outer ends of the kite and bending inwards and releasing to see if the kite returned t original shape.

Firkis ready. Kites bought, ‘kannis’ tied (will not get into the debate as to which was the best kanni – 0-0, 1-0 or 2 -1; this would require a blog by itself) you needed to check in which direction the wind was blowing before you started flying. Down the years we learnt that in the morning you needed to have your back to the Rly station and fly east west and reverse the direction in the evening.

Since majority of the flying happened in the evening, I will focus on the west east direction – viz standing near the statue and flying towards the station while keeping the manjha between the telephone line that ran between 1st floor Nirmala building to Aunty Cassies house and the rope running from the Nirmala terrace to the Coconut tree in front of Aunty Cassie that was left behind once the Christmas star was removed.

To achieve this feat you needed somebody to stand a few feet in front of the telephone wire and “hoist’ the kite which the person flying needed to ‘ghasit ‘ to get height and give ’deel’ so that the kite drifted between the 2 obstacles and soared upwards.

While the statue was the choice location of the boys from Mahim Mata and Nirmala, the guys from the blocks (especially) Lala (Harold Hopkins) would fly from between the blocks and the ‘kabrasthan’ wall while the Fatima boys would fly from the ‘bhaji vada’. And in order not to have kite fights between each other, the younger boys were sent as messengers to inform of which kite was being flown by whom and more importantly whose manjha we should not steal when a kite went ‘gool’

You also needed to be careful during kite flying season, the manjha cuts on the fingers were part of the game but the manjha cuts across the face and necks of guys on bikes running into dragging manjha were horrendous. Also it was dangerous for the guys chasing after kites that can “sailing’. These guys with their ‘laggas’ would sprint across rods etc not looking down – but up in the air rising their lives for a kite.

But in marinagar the most dangerous part was wearing elastic banded pants while flying a kite as you never knew who would come up behind you and pull your pants down – the great fun would then be to watch how the guy would react and the time taken to figure out that he needed to pull his pants up first before letting his kite ‘dive’ out of control. (Karl pulling down Taytons (Claytons)pants and clayton chasing Karl around half of Mahim, is already part of Marinagar folklore)

Kite flying require skills and some of the most skilful kite artists I were, Sana (Hanson) Lala, Lutloot (Louis) – apologies if I’ve missed out any other of these artists. But these guys in my books were the best. There were other who had specialised skills. No one could wrap the manjha on a firkin faster than depato - his skill was to turn the firkin upside down, turn his back to the direction the kite is in and reel in the manjha from between his legs at tremendous speed.

I was also great, I hoisted well, I could tie a mean kanni, I could do the “operations” (fixing broken sticks on kites with sticks from other broken kites), I could put ‘weights’ on the kites to make them turn better one way or another, I could use the ‘chikam patti” with surgical sill on torn kites, I could use my big hands to wrap manjha well and also had a decent speed in wrapping manjha on a firki.

The only thing I couldn’t do then and still can’t do even now is... fly a goddamn kite.