Kites, Treehouses and Culture

1/28/2011 Varanasi, India

With my spirit not yet ruined by all the hustlers in India, I decided to take a chance and accept a guy’s offer to help him fly his kite. As it turned out, it ended without the usual request for money and I had one of my better cultural exchanges here in India. Indians and especially those from Varanasi are fanatical about kite flying! From the top of our guest house we can sometimes count over 100 of them bouncing around in the sky while their strings weave a brilliant spider web from the clouds to the different rooftops across the city. On this day we were along the Ganges and started talking to a group of guys flying their kites high above the opposite bank a couple hundred meters away. About 20 meters down river from us there was another group of guys also flying around the same area. After a few lost in translation moments it was finally explained to me that the two groups were in the middle of a heated kite fight. One at a time a kite from our group would go up against one from the opposing.

Whoever was able to cut their opponents glass covered string would move on to be pitted against the next in line while the loser sadly watched his kite slowly flutter to the ground where the children raced to collect their gratuitous prize. I was never actually allowed to fight, but in between rounds I became the good luck charm as after each time I flew the kite the owner won his battle. This happened an unprecedented 13 times in a row often with my kite winning so quickly, I would never even get the chance to see the attack. The entire hour we were flying there was great conversations and cultural exchanges as we shared in the jubilation of each win and the camaraderie of knowing that no matter how many scornful looks we received from our opponents, they would never figure out our secret weapon (Me). When our magic finally ran out on fight number fourteen, Brooke and I shook everyone’s hand and broke away from our new Indian friends to become tourist again, cherishing our small glimpse into this great culture.

1/29/2011 Varanasi, India

Environmental Presentation… Great to be working! Today we gave our first of two environmental presentations to the children of Asha Deep Vidyashram. This deserves way more than just a simple sentence, but we’ve already written a lot for the website which will be updated this week so better to check that out instead- www.GROWInitiative.org. (Including from the second of our presentations, teacher trainings, treehouse building, etc.)