About

I grew up in the Chinatown area of Calcutta, India, and was exposed to fighter kites (patang in Hindi ) and line cutting with manjha (fine powder glass-coated thin cotton line).

For as long as I can remember, kite flying was a passion and still invigorates me till today. Flying as a kid from our rooftop for endless hours - waking up very early on Saturday, Sunday and holidays to hopefully catch a stray kite which had lost in a
manjha battle - or to fly a kite of my own.

Manjha was relatively expensive for us as kids, and it was sold to us by the Chinese vendors together with kites. They would wrap the manjha off a large reel onto their hand, between little finger and thumb, in a figure of 8 position.

The seller would arbitrarily decide when to stop, and we always asked for a little more! Due to the high cost of kites and manjha, I started at around the age of 8 to build my own kites. The bamboo frame and spines I salvaged from torn kites usually abandoned in the streets.

 

The saddest thing for me in the beginning was to see my kite

get cut… and lost forever. I also had my share of chasing after stray kites on the streets, which was a very dangerous pastime. One could easily fall, or run into a moving vehicle and get injured. Even today, this still happens in many parts of India.

 

As a rule, manjha is always coloured as opposed to the plain white cotton line. Many kite flyers would attach manjha from the kite for as long a length he could afford, or thought was enough for doing battle in the skies. To the end of the manjha we used to attach the plain white cotton line, and try to engage in a fight with only the manjha (sharp) section of the total line.

Sometimes whilst flying solo and very far out from our rooftop, and the white cotton line could be seen clearly, a flyer would suddenly come from behind and cut me out of the sky with his sharp manjha line. If I noticed him early enough, I would pull the line in as fast as I could to hopefully engage in a battle with him with the manjha section of my flying line.

 

If I was not quick enough, I would be absolutely vulnerable and would be cut out of the sky! When I learnt to make my own manjha, I would make very large quantities and this expensive product now became very cheap for me. I did not coat my manjha with any colour, and it stayed white.

If another flyer approached to cut me and was positive I had no defense ( because all the commercial manjha sold was never white colour ), I would wait till the last moment to cut his kite. Needless to say, in these kind of battles I always won, due to the element of total surprise.