A scroll-driven visual essay: dawn over the Buriganga river, kites rising over Old Dhaka's rooftops, a kite fight, a cut kite drifting at dusk, and lanterns and fireworks at night. The story text follows below.
SHAKRAIN
Old Dhaka's festival of kites — a day the whole city
hands over to the sky.
scroll
Poush Sankranti · 14–15 January
Shakrain falls on the last day of the Bengali month of Poush — the moment the calendar tips into Magh, in the cold middle of January. On the ghats of the Buriganga the mist is still on the water, and in the old quarters — Shankhari Bazar, Sutrapur, Gendaria — the Dhakaiya families who have kept this festival for generations are already climbing to their roofs.
Old Dhaka · the 1750s
Kite-flying took hold here in the 1750s — credit goes, by most tellings, to Miron, son of Nawab Mir Jafar, whose passion for kites spread from the court into the lanes. Ever since, the roof has been the festival's true ground: neighbours shouting across parapets, music, winter pithas passed around, and one by one the first kites of the morning let up into the light.
The fight
The fighting line is মাঞ্জা — cotton string dressed with rice paste and powdered glass, dried taut in the sun. Two fliers cross their lines high over the rooftops and saw, give slack, pull — until one thread parts. The loser's kite goes free, and every roof that saw it erupts with the same cry.
Watch the sky.
Dusk
চিল ডানার রৌদ্রের গন্ধ মুছে ফেলে
…the kite wipes the scent of sun from its wings.
After Jibanananda Das
The cut kite belongs to no one now. It rides the last thermals over the river, lower and lower, while the rooftops below begin to glow.
Night
When the light goes, the festival does not end — it changes element. Fireworks stand up from the parapets, fire-breathers walk the roof edges, and paper ফানুস lanterns rise on their own heat, drifting east over the old city until they are only warm points among the stars.
Tap the sky to send up a lantern of your own.
আকাশঘুড়ি
akashghuri.com — sky & kite · a visual essay on Shakrain
Notes on the festival
The story above is a visual essay. What follows is the plain account — what the festival is, when it happens, and what the words in it mean.
Shakrain is the kite festival of Old Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is held on the last day of the Bengali month of Poush, when the whole of the old city climbs onto its rooftops to fly kites through the day, fight them line-against-line, and send up lanterns and fireworks after dark. It is a neighbourhood festival above all — the roof, not the street, is its ground.
It falls on the final day of Poush, which lands on 14 or 15 January each year in the Gregorian calendar — the same turn of the sun marked across South Asia as Poush Sankranti or Makar Sankranti. Kite-flying begins soon after sunrise; the lanterns and fireworks run from dusk until late in the night.
In the old quarters of Dhaka — শাঁখারীবাজার Shankhari Bazar, Sutrapur, Gendaria, Lakshmi Bazar, Farashganj and Islampur, the dense lanes north of the Buriganga river. The celebration is strongest among the Dhakaiya families who have kept it for generations, though the rooftops draw visitors from across the city.
It comes from Sankranti — the Sanskrit-derived word for the sun's passage from one zodiacal sign to the next, and so for the turn of one month into another. Shakrain (also written Sakrain) is the Dhakaiya form of the name. The festival marks Poush giving way to Magh, the deep of the Bengali winter.
By most tellings, the custom took hold in the 1750s and is credited to Miron, son of Nawab Mir Jafar, whose enthusiasm for kites spread from the court into the surrounding lanes. As with much oral history the attribution is traditional rather than documented, but the festival's continuous life in Old Dhaka since the eighteenth century is not in doubt.
মাঞ্জা manja is the fighting line: cotton thread dressed with a paste of boiled rice and finely powdered glass, then stretched and dried taut in the sun until it holds an edge. It is what allows one flier to cut another's line in mid-air. Preparing good manja is a craft in itself, and recipes are guarded.
বাকাট্টা bakatta is the shout that goes up the moment a line parts and a kite floats free — roughly "cut loose!". Every rooftop that saw it calls out together, and children run through the lanes chasing the falling kite, which by custom belongs to whoever catches it. In Dhaka the cry is বাকাট্টা; across the border in West Bengal the same moment is more often shouted as ভোকাট্টা.
ফানুস fanush are paper hot-air lanterns. A small flame at the mouth heats the air inside until the lantern lifts on its own, and it drifts with the wind until the fuel burns out. On Shakrain night hundreds go up together over the old city.
Yes, and it is a real and recurring concern. Glass-coated line can cut anyone it catches, and synthetic or metallic "Chinese manja" is far more dangerous than the traditional cotton kind — it does not break, and it injures motorcyclists, pedestrians and birds. Synthetic and metallic lines have been restricted or banned in parts of South Asia for this reason, and released fanush have caused fires and disrupted air traffic, prompting periodic limits on both.
Two Bengali words: আকাশ akash, sky, and ঘুড়ি ghuri, kite. Sky-kite. The dusk line in the essay above — চিল ডানার রৌদ্রের গন্ধ মুছে ফেলে — is after the poet Jibanananda Das.