K Is For Kite

Away In A Maanja

Lattai handles. Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

It was only when I sat down to write this post that I realised something very important about my childhood years in India. Kite-flying was one of the universal pastimes that pitted kids of (for want of a better word) "fortunate circumstances" against kids whose parents would never be invited to the homes of the former.

Strange how long it takes for obvious realisation to fall into place, isn't it? I grew up at 3 Dumayne Avenue in Kidderpore, where we had huge homes and huge gardens and all the houses on the avenue were occupied by the families of officers employed by the Calcutta Port Trust.

We all flew kites. But so too did the kids from the homes further west, in the open field that was a world away from our cocooned upbringing, even though it was only a high wall that separated us from them. They would never come over, knock on our door and play cricket or badminton or soccer or hockey with us on our spacious, perfectly manicured lawns.

But when it came to kite-flying season, every kid was equal. There's something about that concept that I find particularly liberating, in hindsight.

This photograph shows a stack of a thousand kites.

Kites were very much a part of my childhood. Not surprisingly, then, there is a long sequence devoted to the art of kite-flying in Chapter 12 of my first novel, Vegemite Vindaloo.

From wingtip to wingtip, a standard kite (your everyday, garden variety) is about as wide as a computer keyboard. The flexible, upright central stick is about 40 centimetres long. The gently arched wing stick, slimmer than the upright stick, forms a graceful elipse from one side to the other. The thin paper that comprises the kite's surface is expertly formed, in a distinctive diamond shape, around the supple but reliable framework. Above the arch, a kite can be one colour. Below the arch, it can be another colour. The wedge-shaped tail, reinforced for weight and stability, is generally a different hue.

It was always a good thing to test and enhance the flexibility of a kite before actually flying it. To do this, you had to hold the top of the kite between thumb and forefinger of one hand and the bottom of the kite in the other thumb and forefinger. Then you had to bend the central stick of the kite slightly and rub it across your head, backwards and forwards. Sometimes, if you didn't have the action right or you put too much pressure on the kite, the central stick would snap and the kite went to Kite Heaven. The distinctive sound of the snapping stick is imprinted indelibly on my memory.

Before you flew a kite, you had to tie a kunni, or thread harness. I was taught to take a length of plain white cotton thread, then to double it for strength, before tying the kunni to the kite.

A matchstick or slim twig is the best implement to make four little holes in the kite's paper surface. The first hole goes on the top left quadrant of the kite where the bent horizontal stick crossed the straight upright. The second hole goes on the bottom right quadrant, about two centimetres away. The third and fourth holes were gently punched through the paper skin, about eight to ten centimetres above the wedge tail, on either side of the upright stick.

One end of the cotton cord goes through the two holes on the top of the kite and is knotted neatly together; the other end of the cord goes through the two holes near the wedge tail and, likewise, is knotted neatly together. Then you draw the cord away from the kite's surface, tying a loop in it at exactly the halfway mark. This is the trickiest part of tying a kunni. If the two sides are not exactly equidistant, the kite is hard to control.

Empty lattais in storage, awaiting razor-sharp maanja.

Then, your kite was ready to do battle. To launch your kite into the sky and search for an opponent, you had to tie the cotton harness, or kunni, securely to your "maanja". This was crucial to your success. Maanja has to be bought from kite shops. It is brightly coloured thread that had been treated with glue, finely-ground glass and dye. The sharper your maanja, the greater your chances of success in a mid-air battle.

The "kite shop man" would skilfully unwind a length of maanja from a lattai - after you had chosen what colour you wanted. He would wrap it switfly - and deftly in an elongated figure-eight between the exteded thumb and little finger of his hand. Maanja, surprisingly enough, was never measured. The kite shop men knew exactly how much to give you - and you accepted their judgement on pure trust.

Moisture, however, is a death threat to maanja. When I was a kid, the good kite shops would sell you maanja and hand it over to you like some sacred weapon, wrapped in newspaper, to prevent the moisture from your palms neutralising what was literally and metaphorically its cutting edge.

The maanja had to be hooked through and tied securely onto the loop of the kunni, or cotton cord. The kite was then ready for battle.

Commercial reality: advertising on a lattai.

But kite-flying brought a wonderful expression to Anglo-Indian English. Remember how I told you that the kite's thread harness was called a "kunni"? Well, the inimitable expression "putting on kunni" was and still is a damning label for anyone who tried putting on airs and graces. It's an expression I haven't used in about twenty years. Maybe I'll include it in my next novel.

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