17th of September is an auspicious day. Vishwakarma Puja is
celebrated all over the country on this day. Unlike other festivals, the date
of this Puja does not change from year to year. Lord Vishwakarma, we have been
told, was the (and still is) the
architect of the gods, the builder of the magnificent structures and palaces in
which the gods happily live with their spouses.
We, the ordinary mortals, believe that he is the primeval god
of all machinery and tools from a small screw to a space shuttle! All and
sundry engineering instruments and tools are worshipped by the mechanics, operators
and owners. After the Puja is over
and the Prasad distributed, starts,
what we Bengalis call, the Pet-puja. This
consists of demolishing the piping hot khichoori of moong daal, mutton kosha,
papad fry, tomato chutney and of course rasgollas. This is perhaps the only day
in the year, when the top boss and the regular workers all take their food
together, customarily seated cross legged on the floor.
At Calcutta on this
day was held the famous kite flying competitions. In our childhood this was this
was the event of the year, and there was hardly a terrace
which did not boast of one or two boys(even girls) flying kites, and trying
their best to out manoeuvre the others by cutting through their strings
The build up to the Puja started a couple of weeks earlier,
with trial runs. Assorted kites of different colours, shapes, sizes and designs
were flown from the roof tops. They carried different names like, mukhpora,pet katha,chadiaal. There were so
many technical terms like ruddir
maanja,karnik,ek bogga,lethe khela,tene khela, etc. It will take a concise
Bengali to English dictionary to accommodate the entire gamut of the jargons. Neither
do I possess the capacity or the courage to attempt such a herculean task.
As our terrace was one of the highest in the area, quite a
few friends and acquaintances used to come and take advantage of the height.
One year we had a noted sitarist who was our neighbour Shantada’s guru, as one
of the guests. He was simply brilliant! With one kite he ripped apart the
frontal sky. At another time, my mother had cooked rasgollas which were a tad
tough. One of my friends observed that they would serve as perfect pellets to
be thrown at people who tried to snatch the strings of others’ kites, within
their reach. This sinful act was known as hafta,
comparable to foul deserving a red card in football.
I had an immediate
neighbour, Shantibabu, who was my age and temperament. We used to fly kites
together from our terrace, taking turns to hold the lattai (type of a spindle, to hold the string) and the other person
would fly the kite. In a particular year,Shantibabu and I decided to prepare
our own manja or specially honed
string, to slice through others’. We ground old bottles of vicks vaporub,
sulekha ink, and kissan squash to fine powder. A strong paste was prepared from
extracts of various plants (there was no feviquick then to come to our aid).
Two thrown away bamboo poles, used for dusting cobwebs, were placed at two ends
of our terrace. While I went on releasing the string from the lattai, Shantibabu went on applying the
paste as we completed round after round of laborious walk from one pole to the
other in the scorching sun. By evening we found that the manja was dry and the tenor and texture appeared to be just right!
This was to be our main weapon for the great combat of tomorrow. After being
satisfied with the tests (cutting and bruising our fingers at multiple places
in the process), we re-wound it on the lattai.
We could hardly sleep that night. Morning saw us atop the
terrace and thankfully the sky was bereft of any clouds. We began our battle
with great expectations. Unfortunately, the quality of the manaja was not good enough. One after the other we went on losing
kites. Thoroughly disappointed we wound our home spun manja and shifted to professional ones. This led to a considerable
improvement in our performance. At the end of the day we took stock of the
situation. It was 7 losses to 11 wins. A disappointing start to our manja manufacturing careers.
In the following year, when the season was a fledgling, we
tried our luck with our home made manja
of last year. Well what do you know? In a span of 3/4 days we had sliced
through the strings of all the kites of Maniktolla, without a single loss of
our own!
Alas, kite flying is no more, that Calcutta is no more! We do
not hear the skies reverberate with the shrieks of Bho-
mara and Bho-katta.
