Outside the Diwan ji haveli we were at, just a few metres away, I met a good-hearted
chap named Soni, somewhere in his late thirties, who had his own silver
business nearby. We were in Manek Chowk in the old city of Ahmedabad, which
served as the destination for the final day of the three-day Red Bull Kite
Fight competition (you fly a kite and eliminate others by cutting their
attached string with your own aircraft, with the last man standing the winner).
In between some slightly questionable right-wing views being professed, I asked
Soni about the area we were in. Smiling, he pointed to his chest. “This is the
heart of Ahmedabad.” Really, the old city has an inimitable charm; hundreds of
shops — wedding bands, vegetable shops, silver and gold stores, groceries,
street food — are all huddled close to each other, with residential spaces
integrated within the same space. (It is apparently one of the largest
jewellery markets in the country, a fact revealed by Soni and corroborated by
the internet.) Narrow bylanes intersect each other periodically to fashion a
mazy map to the area, frequented by pedestrians, cows, scooters with
middle-aged ladies riding their husbands around, cows, dogs, bulls, the odd out
of place car, and bikes with this thin metal wire thing attached to the
handlebars, framing the front of the bike. This, I learnt, is because Makar
Sankranti and Uttarayan were just around the corner, festivals which
traditionally serve as the kite-flying season in Gujarat. You have the regular cotton
string that’s used for flying kites, and the manja, the abrasive string that’s coated with powdered glass for battling
other kites. And then, you have the Chinese manja
which, according to locals, can slit your throat if you’re riding around on
your bike in the city. The metal frame was protection.
Chinese manja
was banned at the competition, because the tensile strength of the string used,
apparently nylon, provides an unfair advantage. More importantly, this Chinese manja has also been responsible for
killing hundreds of birds since its introduction onto the scene, and petitions
are on to ban the stuff. Even the regular glass-coated manja has killed many a bird in its heyday, but the Chinese stuff
is far more effective. Kite flying is about flying only for the rank amateurs
to the sport (such as this writer); the real thrill is to cut another kite.
It’s a victorious feeling, accentuated by an emphatic utterance of “Kai po che!” (translated to “I have cut the kite!”), preceded by the war cry “Lapet”, (roll it in) when one smells
enemy blood. So should a kite-flying enthusiast stick to the safe cotton-string
manja, which is wildlife-friendly,
and have a good time maneuvering the kite only to be rudely cut down by A. N.
Other still using the glass-coated stuff? Or should he say fuck the birds, let
me fly?
And I say “he” deliberately because, make no
mistake, kite flying is a man’s sport, it seems. At the grand, multi-storey haveli which served as the hub of the
competition on the final day, there were all kinds of people registering: The
bright-eyed young kids with their dads in tow, the dudes with earrings and
stylish clothes scoping the scene, the kite-auteurs wearing gym gloves to
protect their fingers from the cuts the strings might cause (but fuck the
birds, right?), guys with protective doctor tape around their flying thumb and
fingers, the nerds with their comfortable clothes and multiple spools. There
was even Kaka (a term of endearment for an older person), a man on the wrong
side of 60 (or less maybe), on whom male pattern baldness had had its way, leaving
behind a trail of shimmering grey hairs, and he wasn’t even the oldest
contestant there.
Kaka managed to make the day three finals, and he
had an imperial air about him with the kite string slipping gently through his
fingers, but he was eliminated before he could make the cut. Each day had a
prelim session, where hundreds of kiters were allocated a total of five kites
to manage — “Those who come last. Come first.” [sic] was the slogan for the
event. The prelims lasted for close to four hours with a lunch break thrown in
between. The winners from the prelims would engage in a heated duel to compete
in the finals. The first day was held at Manek Chowk — across multiple terraces,
11 in total, in the neighbourhood serving as locations for contestants to park
themselves and compete — day two at the open grounds at the H.L. College of
Commerce, with the final day again placing the haveli as the axis. So there were all these people registering,
spread across a wide demographic. And yet, where were the women? There was one lady
who registered along with her two daughters, but turns out they were mostly
taking photographs, not competing. There was the very young girl — around five —
who was adding to the cuteness quotient. And the lady who was holding the spool
while her male companion did the actual flying, and another who was providing
moral support. Is that because of the brutal masculinity of the sport itself? Unlikely.
--
Kite flying is inherently graceful and complex. Each
of the terraces had a couple of big speakers on them, while the haveli terrace had a DJ playing
contemporary dance music throughout, music which blared on each of the speakers
at the other locations. It’s only then that I noticed the rhythmic elegance of
kite flying, as contestants swayed to the music while staring deep into the
screaming January sun, peering in to locate their kite, their string. The
gentle maneuvering tugs — to ensure smooth flight and remain in attacking
positions — started inadvertently getting coordinated with the music playing.
The floating visuals of the kites themselves — hundreds of them in the sky —
were seemingly scored by the music by the DJ.
Flying a kite is no child’s play. There may be
manuals available, but there’s no set method or technique to the craft, largely
because it’s a skill that’s acquired on a very local level, each benevolent
teacher with his own myths and tricks. Because of the apocryphal nature of the
teaching of kite flying, it’s geared towards right-handed people, although a
certain ambidextrous ability does seem necessary, although all that went out
the window when I saw a guy with one hand — either due to injury or a condition
(it’s not a question you ask someone for quotes) — taking part too.
--
You have to bend the kite by placing it on your head
and then pulling it down toward your ears. The string needs to be tied to the
kite a certain way (one of the day three finalists, this young kid, kept
intentionally “missing” the knot while the others happily carried on, to waste
time; this thing was against the rules and worthy of disqualification and no
one seemed to notice but he did get knocked out soon after so justice was eventually
served). Getting it in the air and floating requires patience and an
understanding of wind and speed. The length of string extended is critical. You
can’t just throw a kite down from a terrace and then tug at the string and
expect miracles; a lot of precision goes into the process. And then, what do
you do with the spool? Some guys kept it behind them, picking it up as required
whenever they needed to extend or retract the manja; a bunch of them tucked the thing between the legs which was
most ungainly. It has to be close enough for you to use it in a kiting
emergency, but not so close that you trip over it. Once the kite is in full
flight, a certain understanding of aerodynamics — the wind velocity, the lift-
and drag coefficient, the centre of pressure, the angle formed, even if not
articulated as such — seems essential to gauge distance between rival kites and
the trajectory of your own. A strong spatial awareness is necessary too: you’re
focusing your vision on your kite single-mindedly, but swift movement within the
cluttered space is essential to maintaining smooth flight, so one needs to
trudge backwards or sideways fairly often without running into furniture or
another human. Plus, you’re staring straight at the sun, since kiting is definitely
a day sport, so your eyes (and sweat pores) naturally take a healthy beating.
One of the terraces was accessible only through an
old-fashioned hole in the ceiling floor beneath, sort of like how you enter an
attic. This increased the challenges facing the kiters, who now had to also
account for that little hole in the floor that they could fall into. It was
covered with a metal sheet, but people still kept bumping into it. The terraces
which served as locations for contestants actually belonged to residents there.
The haveli itself had some four
flights of narrow, tiny, unlit, rickety stairs, one of which without the luxury
of even a quivering banister. The trick was to walk sideways, hold on to
something, and hope. The other terraces had much the same provisions — one
particularly challenging railing-less staircase had a little rope running along
its axis, which you could grip on to for support or in case of a tumbling
emergency. Without making it exotic or patronising,
this was the life of the locals there. I passed through several floors of
strangers’ houses — greeting them with embarrassment while they were in their
regular, easy-going Sunday clothes watching whatever was on on their
(non-flatscreen) televisions — but each family, each household was beyond
polite. They would guide all the contestants, the media people, the organisers,
to the way to the terrace. All the announcements about the contest were made in
Gujarati, and the number of locals engaged in the whole thing was fairly high.
In fact, while the competition began across the 11
terraces on the last day, very soon there were at least a dozen more terraces
where the residents of the areas began their own kite flying escapades. Some of
the residents got on their balconies and started jiving to the very loud music,
while others (lots of girls among them) got on to their terraces with friends
and families, whipping out their own kites and joining in in the kitefest
happening above them. They weren’t eligible for the prize, but they were very
much part of the festival, and contestants losing any of their allocated kites
to the non-competing flyers was a very legitimate and frequent occurrence. Life
went on as usual downstairs, five storeys below, but on the terraces it was a
different world altogether. And even on the ground, there was a clear buzz that
something was up, something to do
with kites.
This was possibly the highlight of the entire
initiative — Red Bull may be making waves, here or globally, with an aggressive
marketing strategy. They own multiple football teams (Red Bull Salzburg, Red
Bull New York, RB Leipzig), alienating fans in the process, a whole F1 racing
team, a concert bus that tours India and appears at music festivals, and a very
average tasting drink. But such endeavours — where a noncommercial
sport/activity, and all the connotations of the local, cultural traditions of
the place it brings alongside it — are preserved and encouraged, while also including the locals in the activities without
the added gain of “eyeballs” — how many people from across the country would
have travelled to Ahmedabad to witness the Kite Fight? A handful, probably. —
provide a sense of valid groundwork. This was the first ever edition of the
thing, even if I presume many such events do anyway happen locally in
Ahmedabad, and as the competition establishes itself, I’m sure many more women
would sign up too.
A draft of this piece first appeared in The Sunday Guardian on January 18: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/those-who-last-come-first-a-weekend-of-kite-fights-a-the-kai-po-che-war-cry
A draft of this piece first appeared in The Sunday Guardian on January 18: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/those-who-last-come-first-a-weekend-of-kite-fights-a-the-kai-po-che-war-cry
