Vanakkam Doctor !

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...

மகேஷ் ஸ்டோர்ஸ் - 2 In Chennai, the odd sprinkler of kite will appear on the sky, late July or August and soon it will occupy the entire clear blue skyline of Chennai or the old Madras, especially around North Madras, where I grew up. My so called Maa Niram (euphemism for brown skin) would become an African by the time the season was finished, which was the month of October or November, depending on the day Deewali falls. The last day of the season would roughly fall on the weekend after Deewali , as a kid, I would be loaded with tonnes of thread and stacks of kites, caught in our catchment’s area. Kite flying was a sheer delightful past time or a hobby and for some or most in North Chennai, used to be a pride issue. Neighbours became enemies overnight, thick friends became thinner, girls were won or lost, you become nomadic or forgotten in your own household, become thick skinned and in the process become a Delhi erumai or a bullock ! Wars were fought ...