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By The Outsider at 11/10/2009 - 18:07
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Sitting on the porch and smoking a cigarette as I watch boats drift by on the Hudson, the mind if sometime captured by old memories. Not that those memories have anything to do with the Hudson or a cigarette, but you know how the mind some time wanders aimlessly.....or do you......maybe it's just my mind. The trail would start from the ash falling on my hand in the breeze as I impetuously shake it, make itself through an incongruous chain, if there is such a thing, and end up in Lucknow.
I would be shadow batting on the roof of our ancestral home in temperatures rising upwards of 40 Celsius after having fooled Amma that I was taking my afternoon nap. There was still homework to do, but that was never too much of a problem. A couple of hours in the evening was usually good enough. After Gavaskar had scored yet another of his 100 odd centuries and Kapil Dev had crashed Pakistan to another huge innings defeat, it was time to sneak down before Amma woke up from her afternoon nap. I had put in enough practice to gear myself up for the big match in the evening in the gali, but would need to concentrate more if I was to perform well in the weekending encounter against the neighboring Mohalla in the Park, with a hard cricket ball, which would remain so for as long as it did not make it's way into some drain or the other. All these cricketers today I tell you - they whine about a bit of dew!
Too bad this was the summers, not the ideal time to fly kites in the evening. Just a few die hards would venture on the roof tops. But the day I happened to be remembering about was a Thursday when the local bazaar was closed. The big game players of kite flying used to strut out on that day. Tekchand Lala and his proteges to the left, Wohmik Nawab and his clan to the right, and Dr. Jeetender and his brother cum "compounder", in the center. Small time patangbaaz like me formed the audience as the big games began on Thursday evenings around 5 - they used to have a morning round as well but I would only be able to see it during the summer holidays. And let the games begin!
There used to be serious money involved, at least from the perspective of a Professor's son. A tournament amongst these 3 heavy weights would last 2-3 weeks and could fetch upwards of Rs. 10,000 according to the rumor mill. I would think 20 years back that was a good amount of money. The format was rather straightforward. Each team would have 5 participants - I think there was an exception for Dr. Jeetender as he had a relatively smaller extended family. On any given Thursday, 3 had to fly from each team and the tally of the number of opposition kites taken over three weeks was added up. There used to be the occasional quarrel in cases of stray kites interfering their sacrosanct ritual and the rare cry of foul play through collusion, but all in all everyone knew that there was too much pride at stake for any collusion to happen.
Small timers like me used to wish for the right wind direction, so we could be the beneficiaries of the kati patang and used to jeer the side which was most likely to have one flying over our roofs. Some opportunists formed small gangs and moved to the person's house most likely to benefit - some of their kites could go upwards of Rs.3 a pop! But taking ideological sides wasn't easy - Dr. Jeetender was no doubt the crowd favorite because of his flourishing practice which could cure all diseases with a red tonic. But it was more complicated than that - I used to love the biriyani at Wohmick's place and there was a kid in their household in my class. Lala Tekchand and his clan were arrogant neighbors, but owned quite a few shops downstairs and would regularly offer discounts to us. On the other hand I had heard rumors about an argument between the Lala and my grandfather. Things were just never easy.
Though we have long since moved out of our ancestral place, I still visit a lot of these people I grew up with. Patangbaazi is still a charm in old Lucknow, the leaders of the pack have perhaps been taken over by the new Lalas, Doctors, and Nawabs, but it's still fun to see the sky littered with the blue and red meandering papers representing the pride of the patangbaaz and each time he loses a pench it hurts him.
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Once we were a bit mischievous and made the door (string) by joing metallic wires. When it came to peche (kite fighting) the other kids had no clue what was going and we thrashed one kite after another. Then our neighbor got suspicious and he started watching closely and then we quickly lowered our kite. But the 'pwnage' had been delivered and we shared a lot of chuckles as well.
A video to refresh the memories:
Patang? What patang? We called it Guddi in Bihar(or Gudda if they were huge ones
Simple life, simple times. 15 paise mein guddi, 2 rupaye mein you would get top class manjha. Or you could make some right at home. With some saboodaaana water, minced rice and of course extreme crushed splinters of fused bulbs. Have had the pleasure of falling twice in naala, getting hit by bus(not to mention many a bycycle) and falling off the roof of my house
About the only time I would ever agree with Imran Khan, Pakistani cricketer, is that his stamina and legs owes a lot to flying kites. Aye aye kaptaan.
Yeah, I have heard kite being referred to as 'guddi' as well.
Another interesting memory is of a friend who used to collect the kites after they had been cut like many of us. He had like 50 or so kites that he had collected by running around collecting the cut kites. Now one would expect him to also fly since he had so many. But this bugger, would fly the kites so close to his terrace that even if someone else cut his kite, it would just fall on his terrace. I guess he liked his kites very much and didnt want to lose any of them.
Then in about 10 muinutes a big guy came up to that building swearing, slapped me and took away saying "p^*@)@ aise kaise le lega tu meri patang" :lol: