Appa- Mahesh stores 4

What swayed me over to the kites?
We lived in North Chennai, that millennium and that was the entire pre requisite for flying kites. There were no barriers to kite flying in terms of caste, religion, class or anything for that matter. You just have to have kite and thread kandai or a lottai, sooner or later you will be surrounded by anyone from the list above!
I have seen upper middle class mingling with ordinary class people very easily when it came to flying kites and I still feel that it was the common bonding factor that was widely prevailing in 70's and 80's North Chennai, a sense of camaraderie, which may possibly still exists in that part of Chennai.........I love and admire!

Yes, My father did it, his brothers and uncles did it and I am sure, their fathers did it and we all did it!

I was possibly four or five, when one fine day; my appa came home with bundle of black maanja nool, a meesaii baana kite and a cooler on his eyes. Here we go! That was the moment of reckoning for me and the city of lights for my school life! My father exactly looked like JAISHANKAR, the Tamil James bond actor of the seventies!

Wow, the baana was up in the sky, no sooner and the LOTAI (used to collate the maanja thread, was ably carried by brother. Once again, the words spread very quickly those days, without the cell phone or landline and sooner the whole terrace was flooded by admires, jealous onlookers and was totally swarming with eager eyes looking for a big spectacle!