Pink palms and deep cuts that don’t heal for months: Migrant manjha-makers of Ahmedabad’s Dilli Darwaza

Boys are seen looking for potential customers for their wares — tapes that are used as thimbles to protect the fingers of kite-fliers, trumpets that will be blown when a kite is cut in the contest to open in the skies on Wednesday. In the months ahead of Makar Sankranti, this part of Ahmedabad turns into a wholesome kite bazaar.

Khan works as a waiter back home in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, but his manjha-making skills go back to when he was five years old. He takes some two months off from his job at a hotel, to come to Gujarat during Uttarayan to earn some extra bucks during the season. His palms are barely visible as the paste has caused repeated cuts and bleeds, numbing them.

“I have been here for one-and-a-half months. I do the spool work. Some of us are from Kanpur and some from Allahabad (he quickly corrects it to Prayagraj)… We go to Ahmedabad, Surat and many other places to do this job. For the past 15 years, I have been doing it in Ahmedabad. I have worked in Kalupur and many other places in the city.”

Both Khan and his brother work at one of the two spooling sites on one side of the kite market spread across the Shahpur-Dilli Darwaza area. “For people flying kites, the cuts aren’t frequent. They only happen when they are careless or when they pull the string too tightly. But our skins get cut regularly, it comes with the craft. We are not able to eat daal chawal with our hands…. The glass cuts through the skin, deep and repeatedly…will take at least a month and a half to heal. This is our job,” he says, showing his hands.

One palm was bandaged in tapes tearing from the edges and the other had deep gashes blazing red with blood. Both the hands are thickly coated with the remnants of the thick pink paste used to color and make manjhas.

The paste is made of rice flour, glass powder, dyes, and other binding agents and is then put on the cotton threads manually by hand. As the thread glides across their hand when they color it with the paste, it leaves deep cuts.

“There is no other way to make this…what is the option? I don’t know who invented this process, and what they were thinking while making it but there is no solution. We have to use our bare hands. If we use gloves, the thread won’t stay under our grip and starts slipping,” says Khan, contemplatively.

Customers stand impatiently waiting for their yarns to be coloured and spooled, on the pavement which turns into temporary manjha-making sites. Labourers with skills like Khan earn around Rs 700-800 for a day’s work.

Another spool-making site on the same lane, a few shops away, is run by Shama Begum’s husband, Mohammed Irshad Sheikh. He has been doing this for 30-40 years, while Shama collects the money from customers as they buy the reel. She has been doing this for 18 years, since their marriage. “The spooling work starts from 6 am and goes on till about 8 pm. It takes an hour to create one spool. The prices for a spool varies according to the length, it can be of Rs 1,000, Rs 2,000, Rs 5,000 and so on. The profits are not that much but we are able to get enough to pay the wages of the workers,” she says.

The couple have hired 10 workers from Kanpur for their site and sell about 20 to 25 spools per day. The Sheikhs have two daughters, the elder of whom helps manage the site.

Ahead of the kite shops, a little boy wearing a once-yellow shirt, now dull and aged, gives you a bright smile as he tries to sell a tape roll to customers from a small basket hanging from his shoulder. He sells it to help his family earn a few rupees during the festival, along with friends who sell trumpets to blow when a kite gets cut in the contest that will take over the skies on Makar Sankranti (Wednesday).

“I go to school, but around Makar Sankranti I sell these tapes…I do wish to fly a kite but am scared that if I catch one, it will be taken away,” he says wryly. Persistent, he relentlessly tries to make his first sale.

All these people will stay at the Dilli Darwaza market till the festival ends and will return to their homes with their earnings, and come back next year for a better festival season.

Hemaxi Agrawal is an intern at the Ahmedabad office of The Indian Express