It is a festival of (paper) kites. The city skyline is full of colourful kites of all shapes and sizes. Men, women and children, all are on the rooftops from morning. Everyone in the neighborhood flies kites, and you try to fly your kite higher and higher, finally up in the sky, your kite gets into `war' with the neighbor's kite! As both kites are flying so close that their strings come in contact and then whichever string (attached to the kite) is stronger, `wins', as it cuts the thread of the other kite! These are friendly wars!

The loser loses the kite obviously...but not the spirit.. as he gets yet another kite, and flies it high with a stronger thread this time, and gets into more such wars. This goes on and on for the entire day! The winner party yells, screams, jumps and makes lots of noises - shouts of `kaape che' (meaning -we cut their kite) are up in the air for the whole day and could be heard in the entire city!

At night `tukkal' (a lantern tied to the string of the kite) is flown. It looks lovely as we attach as many as 12 lanterns (with small candles inside) to one kite. People eat sweets, vegetables, fruits, sugarcane, etc. to their hearts content. The city looks deserted -hey no traffic- as people are up on their rooftops!

Originally the festival came into existance because of the farmers. In earlier times, the farmers used to fly kites so as to know the direction of the wind, and this wind was most important because by knowing the direction, they could predict the rainfall for the year.

The other thing that is important is, this is also Sun-worshipping day (Indians are Sun worshippers). After this particular day, the sun moves to `Uttar' (North) of the Globe. The word `Uttarayan' means moving to the North.

The Kite-flying is so popular here in Ahmedabad (where I stay) that since some time, we have International Kite Flying (it was 12th this year) for a week long. A large number of international and national kite fliers participate - more than 100 participants from countries like USA, UK, Malaysia, Korea, Germany, South Africa, France.

I hope you enjoyed the mail ! Try enjoying the festival itself - join us for next year's Uttarayan!!
:-)
Roopal