Tag Archives: kites

Memories of Gujarat (India) at a park in north London’s Golders Green

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GOLDERS HILL PARK lies halfway between Golders Green and Hampstead – both in north London. It occupies what used to be the extensive grounds of a former country house that was built in the 18th century and destroyed during WW2 (in 1940). Its fine landscaping was influenced by the great garden designer Humphry Repton (1752-1818). I have been visiting the park since my early childhood in the 1950s, when, if I remember correctly, my parents used to play tennis on the still existing tennis courts. The park has many attractions including a pond with an attractive stone bridge; a walled garden; many fine old trees; plenty of shrubs and flowers; a bandstand, which was certainly in use during my childhood; a good café-cum-restaurant; a wooded area; a stumpery; a deer enclosure; and a small zoo. The deer enclosure and the zoo were in existence when I was a young child. Today’s visitors can watch the deer and view animals such as wallabies; ring tailed lemurs; at least one kookaburra; donkeys; and a variety of exotic birds. The pond mentioned above is often visited by ducks.

Today (the 3rd of March 2024), we visited the park on a crisp, cold, sunny morning. The dew-covered lawns were full of blooming crocuses, and some of the bushes had burst into flower. Most of the trees, being deciduous, were devoid of leaves. By chance, I looked up at one of these leafless trees and saw a children’s kite caught up in its branches. Seeing this, my thoughts shifted 5000 miles from Golders Hill to Gujarat (in western India).

Wherever you go in Gujarat, you are likely to see kites caught up in the branches of trees. Unlike the kite I saw today, those in Gujarat are not the toys of small children, but part of a festival celebrated once a year, The Hindu festival, which celebrates the increase of day length a month after the winter solstice is known as ‘Uttarayan’ in Gujarat. The occasion is celebrated by kite flying. During this period of kite flying, riders of bicycles, motorcycles, and other two-wheelers face a real but, to the outsider, unusual hazard that could result in serious injury, if not death. I have described this festival and its hazards in some detail in my anthology of 101 vignettes of life and travel in India –“The Hitler Lock and Other Tales of India”.

Seeing the kite in Golders Hill Park reminded me of what I have seen in Gujarat during my several visits to that Indian state. However, although this year Uttarayan began on the 15th of January – not so long ago – I find it hard to believe that the kite I saw in the park was stranded in the tree during celebration of that festival.

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High flyers

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Today, 7th January 2020, we bought tickets for onwards bus journeys at Ahmedabad’s Geetamandir bus station. The young man at the ticket counter was an excellent salesman.

We stopped at the Raipur Gate, one of the several gates on the now demolished city wall. Only the gates remain as mementos of this wall.

Next to the gate, there were several spinning kite cord winders. They were preparing the cords that would be attached to the kites flown to celebrate the festival of Uttarayan (end of winter), which is celebrated all over Gujarat.

White thread is fed through a basin of coloured dye and then coated with finely ground glass and glue before being wound onto large spinning bobbins. The thread, when dried, is wound onto smaller bobbins that are sold to kite flyers. The ground glass is added to the thread so that kite flyers can use their kites to cut through the strings of other kites while they are airborne. The men making the threads were not Gujaratis, but from outside the state, from Bihar and UP, for example.

Ahmedabad now hosts an annual International Kite Festival.

The kites, made mostly of paper, are sold along a street leading away from the Raipur Gate. Kite flyers need to buy their kites and reels of thread (to attach to them) separately. We spotted numerous small stalls selling adhesive tape. One of the vendors of these explained that pne wraps this tape around fingers to stop them being injured by the very abrasive glass coated kite threads. Masks were also on sale. These are worn during the kite festival.

When we asked someone where we could watch the kites being flown, we were told: “In the air, up in the sky”. On further questioning, we were told, as if we were idiots, that the kites can be seen flying in the heavens.

Some years ago we visited Ahmedabad in late March. Even so long after Uttarayan, the branches of trees were filled with the remains of kites that had been caught in them.