Changa chet
Also चंगा, and changa chait for the fight. The glass-coated line is maja, manja or majha.
Kite fighting from the rooftops of the valley. Two flyers cross their lines, and the line coated with ground glass saws through the other. Whoever cuts shouts "chet!", and the children run after the falling kite.
- Who plays
- Two or more flyers, and every child who runs after a cut kite.
- What you need
- A kite, a spool called a lattai, and line coated with ground glass, the maja.
- Where
- Rooftops and open fields, most of all in the Kathmandu valley.
- When
- From Nag Panchami in August to Haribodhini Ekadashi in November, at its height at Dashain.
What you need
The kites came from Kolkata and Patna, and the lighter Lucknow kites were the ones for fighting. The Kathmandu Post names six patterns: Ambe with a heart in the middle, Dibdibe chequered, Pakhete with an edge of another colour, Sete white, Nilchi blue and Rate red. A kite in two colours is a bapache.
The fighting line, the maja, is coated with glass from pounded or burnt bulbs, held on with a paste. Every boy kept his own recipe secret, and the sources give three: boiled snail slime with rice or sago, flax seed with arrowroot, sago and aloe, or gum with arrowroot.
The line came from Bareilly. It is wound on a lattai, a reel with a spool at each end on a smooth stick, and wound in by patting the spools.
How a fight goes
Getting it up
Kites go up once the monsoon is over and the westerly wind starts to blow in the afternoon.
Crossing lines
Two flyers bring their lines across each other, and the glass line saws through the other. The usual Kathmandu way was to climb above the other kite and feed out line slowly. Ravi M Singh remembers a rival in the 1960s who attacked from below instead, pulling in line fast and steadily. Another account has the flyer climb above the other kite and then drop sharply onto its line.
Chet!
Whoever cuts the other line shouts "chet!". The cut kite drifts down trailing its line, and the children chase it across the roofs and lanes. The chase often ends in a scuffle.
Winning
In a neighbourhood contest the winner is whoever is still flying after cutting all the rest.
Why at Dashain
The kites are said to carry word to Indra, the god of rain, that there has been rain enough. Farmers used to discourage flying before the planting was done.
What is on record
- 1949Manandhar Kite Center opens in Kalimati. Shree Chitrakar Kite Center in Asan is said to be about a century old.
- 1960sRavi M Singh's fights with a rival who attacked from below, as he told them in 2017.
- 2003Club Himalaya starts a kite contest at Nagarkot. The Japanese Embassy ran a contest of its own for eighteen years.
- 2062 BSAn organised contest, Changa Chait 2062, is held.
- 2024The Kathmandu Post finds the sky quieter, blaming buildings over the fields, then television and phones. One flyer says you won't hear a single chait.
Where the sources disagree, or say too little
What is the line called, and what is on it?
Maja, manja, majha and maza are all in print, and the paste the glass is held on with is different in every account.
What are the kites telling Indra?
Some accounts say the kites tell Indra there has been rain enough, others that he should stop the rain. Both mean the same thing: the monsoon is over.
Was there a treaty over kites?
ECS tells a legend of a "Treaty of Kathmandu" made over birds caught in kite lines. No other source mentions it.
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from one of these. Where a source could not be read, or a claim has none, the text says so.
- Kites over Kathmandu sky, Prawash Gautam, The Kathmandu Post, 3 October 2024
- Changa chait: A Kathmandu boy's memories of a worthy adversary, Ravi M Singh, Onlinekhabar, 30 September 2017
- Combat in the Sky: Changa & Changa Chait, Ivan Sada, ECS, August 2010
- दशैंमा किन चङ्गा उडाइन्छ ? यस्ताे छ कारण, Onlinekhabar, 25 Asoj 2075 (in Nepali)
- दशैं कथा : हिन्दूस्तानी केटोले सिकाएको चंगा मन्त्र, Onlinekhabar, 28 Asoj 2075 (in Nepali)