From Red Fort to the skies: How Old Delhi’s kite market comes alive for August 15

“At least 200 people come every day, but only around 150 actually buy,” says Jamal Ahmed (54), who has run Ayaan Party Store for five years.

People buy kites at the Lal Kuan market, Delhi ahead of the Independence day celebrations (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)

A kite enthusiast, Jamal knows where the best kites come from. “The kites from Bareilly are the most in demand, as they are of good quality and reasonably priced. The ones from Rampur are the cheapest but the kites that come from Moradabad are the finest. But they are expensive,” he says.

Prices range from Re 1 to Rs 1,500, depending on size and quality, and rise as August 15 approaches, he adds.

A few shops away, Mohammad Khalid (75) of Haji Kite House has seen the market change since 1972, when his father first opened the store.

He rattles off kite sizes — Majholi, the regular-sized kite; Addhi; Pauni and Tawa, the largest. “The smaller kites are mostly made of plastic, usually printed with cartoon and superhero characters,” he says.

The biggest kite available in the market – 6 Tawa – is used in competitions. The term “tawa” refers to the sizing scale based on standard paper sheets. These kites require a stronger Panda saddi to support its weight, he says.

The length of the charkhis – spools, the thread winder used to control and navigate a kite – also vary. Beginners usually start with 250-500 m, while festival charkhis can hold 1,000 to 2,000 m of thread.

However, not every trader is a permanent fixture in the market.

Mohammed Adil (26) travelled from Jaipur to set up R B Rajasthan Patang House for the summer and Independence Day season. “We go to Bikaner, Jaipur and Delhi. We came to Delhi two months ago, during the summer holiday season, when the sales season began. It will last until August 15.”

He orders in bulk and well ahead of time. “One bundle consists of 5,000 pieces, and about 20-22 bundles are prepared at once,” he adds, with stock booked two to three months in advance from suppliers in Bareilly and Jaipur.

The market, meanwhile, is caught between saddi and manja — abrasive, glass- or adhesive-coated specialised string used to fly a kite. Though manja, which is banned, is not sold in the market, traders like Utkarsh Gupta say saddi often gets swept up in raids meant for nylon threads and manjas.

The National Green Tribunal had banned nylon and glass-coated kite string across India in 2017 after linking it to injuries and deaths involving people, birds and animals. Delhi’s own ban has been in force since January 2017, with violations carrying fines and up to five years of imprisonment. Many competitive flyers use saddi on the lower or handling parts of their set-up to protect their hands, reserving manja for the cutting edge.

For Utkarsh of Virender Trading Company, now in its fourth generation, the problem is the confusion between banned manja and the traditional cotton saddi sold in the market.

The traditional cotton saddi is manufactured from long-staple cotton fibers in Bareilly that are spun into multi-ply yarn, treated with a specialised glazing or starch finish for tensile strength and smoothness, and wound onto charkhis. “A kite is nothing without thread – how will it fly?” he asks.

But what survives, ban or no ban, is the pull of the festival itself.

Abu Sufiyan Khan, founder of Tales of City, an experiential heritage and cultural tourism platform, has spent five years organising a rooftop kite-and-fireworks gathering timed to August 15. His Patang Aur Pech Festival, which began with 30 guests, has grown to nearly 200.

Both Varun Sindhwani and Astha Singh attended Abu’s Independence Day event in Old Delhi.

Varun calls himself “a byproduct of flying kites”. His parents met as rival kite-fliers on opposite rooftops where his father lived in Rohini. “My father used to lose the match (kite flying) on purpose, for her to notice him. Decades later, my father still loses to my mother, but I think now it is just because she is much better at it than him.”

Astha, a resident of Greater Kailash 1, remembers running to a neighbour’s roof to reclaim a cut kite as a child in CR Park. She still flies with her father whenever they can.

For Astha, the Patang Aur Pech Festival was a surreal experience. “I did not know that Independence day is celebrated like Diwali in Old Delhi. We were all flying kites and as the dusk settled over Chandni Chowk, fireworks joined the kites in the sky, against the silhouette of the Jama Masjid. It is a sight to behold,” she says.