Makar Sankranti, Kites, and Birds
An Annual Festival in India Celebrates with Kite Flying, but it’s a Hard Time for Birds
Makar Sankranti celebrates the return of spring with parties, ritual, and kite flying. Hundreds of birds are injured when they collide with sharp kite strings.
The Indian festival of Makar Sankranti begins on January 14 each year, the day when the sun begins its northward journey, the days start to get longer, and spring seems imminent. The movement of the sun is particularly celebrated by kite flying – thousands of brightly coloured kites fill the skies and symbolize the sun during Makar Sankranti.
The kite flying activity includes kite battles, particularly between male kite flyers, the objective being to cut your opponent’s kite out of the sky. To aid in the fight, kite strings, or manjas, are deliberately sharp and strong – originally made with string, glue and ground glass but increasingly made of sharp and almost unbreakable nylon.
The dark side of the manja is that it cuts things other than kite strings – fingers and other body parts of kite flyers and spectators, and legs, wings and bodies of birds that are unlucky enough to fly into the slender threads. Hundreds of birds die each year from lacerations or amputations caused by manjas. Concern for the hapless birds is growing and, in many places, vets stand by to provide first aid to injured birds, while kite flyers are encouraged to stick to open areas where there are few trees and therefore fewer birds.
Sources:
Suryanarayan, Deepa. "Birds Lose Battle in the Skies." DNA: Jan 12, 2007.
Pareek, Sushil. "Kite Flyers' Festivities Cause Fatal Injuries to Birds on Makar Sankranti." DailyIndia.com: Jan 15, 2007.
Best Breezes. "Makar Sankranti: Indian Festival Begins January 14, 2006." Dec 29, 2005.
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