Whats Dora got to do with Baanaas ?

It was a quiet weekend after a long long time. Just too tired to go outside and do anything, and that implies some quality time with the kids in our very own backyard. What started as a cold day ended up as a windy but sunny evening.

A day well spent, taking pictures of the flowers in the backyard, pushing the poor macro on the old Canon S30 to its limit, flying a kite (or attempting to) with Jr. and thinking of old times with a glass of tea in hand.

Jr. got this kite as a goody bag gift at a birthday party. It is not the solid paper kite we are used to as kids in our younger days in India. They make them out of polythene now and the whole kite can be rolled into a little tube. You place a plastic crossbar across and use a quick connect tie in the middle (it is a clip on) and voila, ready to lauch. The fact that the kite has Dora the explorer and her trusted aid, "Boots" the monkey is an added plus. Unfortunately the experience ended when Dora got stuck on top of the apple tree!

The whole experience brought back so many memories. When we were kids, we got to fly kites only when we went to the beach. All this changed when the owners of our rental house decided to do some construction. The guys who did the construction were very friendly and they taught me and my brother all about "Baana kaathadis", a type of short tail paper kite on a bamboo frame which is not that easy to launch but once it is up there, you get a fantastic kite flying experience. The budding scientists that we were, the Mandaveli brothers spent every summer perfecting the art of Baana making not to mention our disastrous experiments of adding glass powder to coat the strings.

We used to run across streets, go across rooftops just to catch the kite that has been cut loose in our neighbourhood! It was only a few years before the government put a stop to kite flying in the city what with people driving two wheelers getting their necks cut on these glass coated kite strings. These days there are fixed days in the year like the "kite festival" where people convene in open grounds to fly kites. Somehow Kite flying is not a popular pastime in the US today. Do not know why.

I felt young again today flying that Dora Kite and that made my day!

The photos of the flowers and the stranded kite ...

The little green stuff is baby grapes! The whole bunch of grapes is smaller than a leaf. We will be tasting them in a few months.. Yum Yum Yummy...