HYDERABAD: Kite festival is just two days away and kite and manja sellers are all geared up to embrace buyers. Take a stroll through Dhoolpet and you will witness a colourful delight of kites, in all sizes and shapes beautifully decked up in front of the shops. But what one may not notice is that these local manja manufacturers are facing the brunt, as people are opting for plastic kites and manjas.
Inder Singh, is one of those many manja manufacturers in the city whose business has been affected for the same. “We have become helpless since the time plastic manjas have come to Hyderabad,” he says in grief and it has been close to five years that these local manja manufacturers have managed to make good money. “We make only one per cent of the money that we used to make five years ago,” he informs. But this is a business that they can not abandon. “I have been earning my living through this for the past 37 years. The art is very precious to me. At the same time, there are also some people who ask for this authentic manja. We have to make it for them,” he explains, adding that earlier they used to work night and day during the season. “Now we work only on orders because we don’t want the manja to get wasted,” rues the 66-year-old.
In the scorching heat, Inder Singh works with his two sons. “We use powdered glass, colour and cooked rice to make it,” he explains. With a thread tied across the ground which is set to be coloured, he holds a rice ball mixed with colour and glass and runs it across the thread. Showing his colourful hand with a few bandages and blood strains, he explains that it takes a lot of effort to make the manja. “Our hands get cut while colouring, because of the thread and also glass pieces. Sometimes the glass piece also gets into our body while powdering it,” he shares. This thread that is rolled into reels is then made into manja and it takes one hour to make one reel. “We make 15 reels per day,” says Inder These reels are then made into charkas. Making about six charkhas per day, Dharmesh, Inder’s son shares that the money they make out of it is not sufficient to run their family. “To support our family, we make Ganesh and Durga murtis for Ganesh Chaturti and Dussera respectively. Inder also explains the manjas are dangerous enough to kill a person. “People have cut their hands and necks during this festival due to plastic manjas. If one uses thread manja, such incidents won’t take place as the manja itself will get cut when it comes in contact with a person’s body, even with a slightest pressure,” he explains.