Be a kite-flyer, not a killer

The sun was about to set. My eyes were chasing a unique urban animal. Unlike common black kites or familiar brown dogs, this was red in colour. Unlike all other playthings, it couldn’t be contained. It lay motionless one second, but soon it whipped and whirled and turned, racing. It was not racing on the ground.

Instead, the kite soared in the sky. To be able to fly the kite well, I had to catch a draught of air. That sudden draught of air would hopefully take the kite upwards, higher and higher till it reached a calm place where one just had to hold the kite twine; a placid place where the kite finally stopped tugging. I was trying to find that calm place, above the struggling heat of the evening. “Yank, yank!” my friend said to me.

In listening to her and pulling a fast one on the kite, the thread cleanly rebelled. It cut through two fingers and my palm, like a sun-warmed knife over butter. Drops of blood fell from my right hand. The twine on the kite was glass-coated, dark, shining, with sheen of danger on it. It was different from pale cotton kite-string. This was a killer, it demanded a blood sacrifice.

All across India, children and adults both cut through the heat islands of their towns, cities and villages, looking towards the sky. Some skies have pigeon-catchers. More skies have kite flyers. The kites, like India’s Independence day that they mark, are like little badges of sovereignty. They soar over cities which are full of noise in all but the sky. The colours are vivid, but the kite-paper fragile.

The wind that picks them up is sometimes a puff, and sometimes strong enough to cut your fingers. What also cuts your fingers is the glass or metallic coat on the kite twine, or string that is made of nylon. While the kite itself is a slender, innocuous object, the wind gives it unpredictability. And the glass coat or nylon thread gives the elegant craft of kite-flying a bite.

Over a mosaic of colonies in Delhi, you can see kites flying from vantage points in the city on most weekends. From Mumbai’s local trains, kites mark the sky line like testimonies to abandon and freedom from the urban grind.

On celebrations for Makar Sankranti in January and Independence Day on August, the kites come out more. Skies are dotted with mad colours. Children scream, adults shout, and the sky becomes a battlefield. People do their best to manoeuvre their kites to circle other kites—like predatory birds—to cut the neck off another one.

It appears full of gaiety and abandon, with just a hint of thrill, like all good sport. But the kites, lately, have been taking their toll in blood. A different sort of blood. Bloody fingers of kite-flyers can be dabbed in Dettol and warmed near gas stoves. Lucky children will have their mothers cooing over their fingers and giving them an extra snack that evening. But others have not been so fortunate.

Last year, on Independence Day, three people died, their necks accidentally slit by kite-string. Two of them were toddlers, not more than five years old. A more silent toll has also been rising across India. Those are the quiet, and fatal, injuries of thousands of birds and animals dying because of glass-coated or nylon kite string.

In Gujarat, people tried to save an ancient, critically endangered vulture, whose cavernous throat and rump were horrifically mangled with glass coated kite string. Pigeons and black kites—that still live in our cities—drop like rocks from the sky, so entangled in manja that they can’t even move. Birds that prefer trees, such as the tota or parakeet, ullu or owls, get caught in the very trees they live in, because of a kite that landed on a tree and left behind a killer of a string.

At the end of last year, the National Green Tribunal banned coated manja—those that are meant to cut, laced with glass, metal or other substances. Only cotton strings are allowed, further boosted by notifications such as one Delhi government has put out. Mumbai police has banned nylon manja for this Makar Sankranti.

But a ban is like a way to find more contraband. Places that ban alcohol have more bootlegging. Cities that ban firecrackers have more sales. Forest areas which have a ban on hunting and carrying weapons attract the very same unscrupulous activities.

Bans on manja and nylon threads can’t work unless people understand the reasons behind them, and find it in their hearts to comply.

In the towns and cities sweating for a better future, flying a kite is a brief respite from crowds. The sky is seldom crowded. But cities are also refuge for so many birds. Peacocks prance on terraces. Pigeons nest on window ledges. In heat of the sky, Black kites, Black-shouldered kites, Egyptian vultures, Brahminy kites, and very occasionally, Gyps vultures fly. On leafy trees, parakeets and bats sit. On dry trees, many sorts of owls roost.

All of them die because of the bite from kite-string. No one has a correct estimate, but hundreds of thousands of birds (and bats?) dying, silently, bloodily, and painfully each year, is a good guesstimate. In Ahmedabad, more than 1100 birds were hit by kites on a single Makar Sankranti in January. These included resident as well as migratory birds, like Pelicans, Vultures, Flamingos, Rosy starlings and Greylag goose.

Kite flying is an art. Kite making is a craft. Kites mean many things for people—some children retain their taste for the sport into adulthood, some families bond over the game, others play as solitary soldiers. Kite flying should not stop. But glass-coated manja and nylon strings need to stop being used. Our race across the sky is the end of the line for another life.

Be a kite-flyer, not a killer.

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