The sky is not the limit for the joy of flying a kite though the kite itself may be just about fifty metres up in the sky on a breezy afternoon. Perhaps, the fact that my childhood in the late 1960s and early 1970s included friends from the Bhat, Virani and Isani families that hailed from Gujarat gave me knowledge and access to specialised kites and kite-flying threads (manza) on spools that were otherwise not available in Goa.
Till these were available, we made our own kites with the same kind of paper with which we made stars for Christmas. Occasionally someone with his father, rarely both the parents then, in Kuwait brought a bigger kite shaped like an animal or a bird but it invariably ended up like a penguin, unable to fly unless one went to the beachfront. Transport was an issue then and the last bus from Calangute to Mapusa was at 4 pm in the afternoon!
It was in 2014, that the International Kite Festival was celebrated in Belgaum (now Belagavi) and extended in Goa through my friend Shailendra Mehta, also of Gujarati stock but born and brought up in Goa. He is more fluent in Konkani than I and has rendered my entries for the Goa University’s Konkani Encyclopaedia into Goa’s official language, Konkani in the Devanagari script. However, the kite strings and his surname tied him up to the Uttarayan festival in Gujarat and brought the kites flying to Goa. It was so successful that a second edition was held in 2016 with the Goa Tourism Development Corporation stepping in to support it. Kite festivals are big money. The festival was held at Colva beach, near Margao on January 20 and 21 in 2016, and at Miramar beach in Panaji, on January 23 and 24.
The participants in the Kite Festival in Goa were a part of the circuit that started off in Gujarat. They flew in from the USA, France, UK, the Netherlands, Russia, Malaysia and Indonesia. Obviously, there were enthusiasts and professional kite fliers from across India participating in the event. Fortunately, mid-January is not so tourist-heavy season in Goa as it is during Christmas and New Year. The GTDC could accommodate the international kite fliers. Sponsors need to be organised for their air travel and other expenses. It is a business in itself.
Middle of January is celebration time with festivals across India, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Gujarat to Assam. Call it Shishur Sankraat or Pongal; Uttarayan or Magh Bihu or by any other name, Makar Sankranti is a time to celebrate the return of the sun to the Northern hemisphere from the Tropic of Capricorn or Makar in the South. Can these celebrations be tied together with a kite-string? That is a possibility that needs to be explored.
Recently, my very first school of formal studies, St Mary’s Convent High School in my hometown of Mapusa, presented a drill with kites at its annual sports day. Many children saw a kite from close quarters for the first time. The routine of longer hours in school followed by the new fad of tuitions or coaching classes for all, the bright and the duds alike in the afternoons, has taken away the joys of childhood. The easy access to smart phones after the Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated the problem by keeping the children glued to the mobiles even before they go to school. Can kite-making be introduced as a skill for arts and crafts classes? Can kite-flying be made a sport? Some out of the box options are needed if one is to overcome the ‘digital arrest’ of children by the smart phones.
Goa’s long coastline, its existing infrastructure of shacks on the beach and reasonably good transport system can be tapped to promote flying of kites from mid-January till May. It would make far more sense to watch well designed kites in the air than to walk about in the dark on New Year’s Eve hoping to grope someone in the dark and ending up battered by onlookers or idle folks, including off-duty kitchen helpers from the shacks. Perhaps, some of the tourists can even pick up the skills if some hands-on sessions are conducted. It may be possible to sell some fancy kites. Impulse buying is a major revenue earner. Half the things we buy at foreign destinations or from other tourist attractions within India we hardly ever use. Children are not the only people who want to buy what they see as interesting at a given moment. It is a market that we need to tap into. Finding the ‘bikini wali firangi’ on the beach has been a past tense for a long time now. Go, fly a kite today!
(The writer, former agricultural officer and a mentor to the GenNext organic farmers, is committed to nurturing young talent for a food-secure future)
