Street Games Of India: Common Games Played on Streets

Street Games Of India: Patang Bazi (Kite Flying)

Kids and elders both play this game with great enthusiasm. Patang Bazi, Kite flying is the most loved game for kids. But their parents enjoy it the most. It looks great when the sky is covered with colorful kites and the cool breezes take them higher and higher, as they will touch the heaven. During this process other kite flyer’s trying to bring your kite down entangle their kite with yours, and hey! an exiting kite fight starts. It is not only existing up in the sky, it is also on the ground when the kite looters of the kite run along with the kite without caring what they are doing and where they are going.

Kite flying needs lot of pocket money as you have to buy many kites its thread which should of best quality. Kites are of different shapes and sizes. Professional kite flyers design their kites themselves or get them designed by the professional kite makers. But as for you kids you get many at stores or you can design one for yourself. The one available in the markets is generally square, some are rectangular and some are special with two ovals joined together. There are kites with tail also.

Fine paper is used in making kites. This is strung on a frame of thin bamboo, one standing lengthwise, the other like a bow across it. The kite paper is pasted on the frame with glue. About three inches from the top, and four inches from the bottom of the lengthwise stick, fine thread treated with powdered glass, is fixed, forming a triangle. This is attached to hundreds of yards of thread, also treated with powdered glass and wound around a reel. The thread on the reel revolves in the hands of the learner as the expert flies the kite.

The fight is encouraged by the onlookers by shouting ‘I yoh Katta’ means look its being cut. The person whose kite is cut is the looser and the looters loot his kite down in the streets.

Kids should never fly kites from higher places, they should fly it in the open places like parks and elders should always be there to guide them. In India kites are flied with great enthusiasm on 15th August every year. The sky is filled with tricolor kites, and it is scene worth watching. The atmosphere is filled with the shouts of looters and the fighters.