On Monday, 14th January 2014 the skies above Ahmadabad city of Gujarat (India) will come alive with kites - in a hundred different colours, shapes and sizes, soaring way up above the earth, fluttering and darting above the rooftops.
Uttarayan is celebrated every year on 14th January, known as Makar
Sankranti in other parts of north India, and Pongal in Tamil Nadu, and
continues on the 15th.
The festival of Uttarayan is a uniquely
Gujarati phenomenon, when the skies over most cities of the state fill
with kites from before dawn until well after dark. The festival marks
the days in the Hindu calendar when winter begins turning to summer,
known as Makar Sankranti or Uttarayan. On what is usually a bright warm
sunny day with brisk breezes to lift the kites aloft, across the state
almost all normal activity is shut down and everyone takes to the
rooftops and roadways to fly kites and compete with their neighbors.
Watch this video
Kites
of all shapes and sizes are flown, and the main competition is to
battle nearby kite-flyers to cut their strings and bring down their
kites. For this, people find their favored kite-makers who prepare
strong resilient kite bodies with springy bamboo frames and kite-paper
stretched to exactly the right tension. Lastly, the kites are attached
to a spool (or firkin) of manja, special kite-string coated with a
mixture of glue and glass to be as sharp as possible for cutting strings
of rival kites. Production of kites and kite supplies can be seen on
the streets of Ahmedabad beginning in November, to get ready for
Uttarayan, and nowhere more so than in Patang Bazaar, the special kite
market that appears in the old city. For the week preceding the
festival, it is open 24 hours a day for all kite lovers to stock up for
the festivities.
Parents who normally find their children hard to
get out of bed for school will find them setting the alarm for 5 am on
14th Jan., to get up and start flying kites in the ideal pre-dawn wind.
The atmosphere is wonderfully festive, as whole families gather on the
rooftop, special foods like laddoos , undhyu or surati jamun are
prepared for eating over the course of the day, and friends and
neighbors visit each other for group kite-flying fun. Often people look
out for which of their friends has the optimum terrace for kite flying
and many will congregate there. This leads to many social gatherings
that would not otherwise occur, as one person's brother's friends meet
their classmate's cousins, because they have all gathered on the rooftop
of the same mutual friend. People often find themselves marking time by
Uttarayans: "I met you three Uttarayans ago, right?" is a not uncommon
phrase. At night, kite fighters send up bright white kites to be seen in
the darkness, and skilled flyers will send aloft their tukkals with
strings of brightly lit lanterns in a long line leading back down to the
rooftop. From early morning to late at night, Uttarayan provides lots
of fun and beautiful sights to remember for a long time.
Since
1989, the city of Ahmedabad has hosted the International Kite Festival
as part of the official celebration of Uttarayan, bringing master kite
makers and flyers from all over the world to demonstrate their unique
creations and wow the crowds with highly unusual kites. In past years,
master kite makers from Malaysia have brought their wau-balang kites,
llayang-llayanghave come from Indonesia, kite innovators from the USA
have arrived with giant banner kites, and Japanese rokkaku fighting
kites have shared the skies with Italian sculptural kites, Chinese
flying dragons, and the latest high-tech modern wonders. A master kite
maker and famous kite flyer Rasulbhai Rahimbhai of Ahmedabad trains of
up to 500 kites on a single string have come to be a classic attraction.
Almost every known variety of kite can be seen in the skies over Sardar
Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad, from box kites to high-speed sport kites,
from windsocs and spinsocs to hand-painted artistic kites.
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