Team M’lore hopes to fly high at kites fest

TNN

MANGALORE, 06 September 2010: It is a French invitation that our own globe trotting intrepid band of hobby kite flyers -- Team Mangalore just could not resist. Packing their bags for a 11-day French sojourn starting September 11 on an invitation from the mayor of Dieppe are members of Team Mangalore -- Sarvesh Rao, Dinesh Holla, Prashanth Kumar and Subhash Pai --who with their versatile kite collection are on a mission to spread culture through kites.

 

Team Mangalore is the only team representing India in this International Kite Festival being held at Dieppe, France, involving participation from over 42 countries across the globe. Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd, a subsidiary of ONGC, has sponsored the visit of Team Mangalore. Incidentally, Prashanth Kumar, and Subash Pai are employees of MRPL.

 

The kite festival in Dieppe is said to be one of the world’s 300 not-to-be missed events. Keeping in mind the theme of the Dieppe festival that will be held on September 18, Team Mangalore is all set to compete with rest of the world with its latest creation __ Pushpaka Vimana __ a flying object as described in Ramayana. This kite is a 3-D appliqui work made up of rip stop nylon fabric, is 11.5 feet wide and four feet high.

 

 

Team Mangalore has used nine different coloured fabric and carbon fibre rods as spars. They spent 392 hours making this kite, which has 1,080 different shaped pieces of fabric stitched together. The kite is designed by team’s artist Dinesh Holla and is put together by Harish Kodialbail, Narayan, Satish Rao, Subhash Pai with technical support by Sarvesh Rao and Prashanth Upadhyaya. Rao has machine stitched the entire kite.

 

In addition, Team Mangalore has also created a new bird kite, line art kite designed specially for the event. They would fly their special kites such as Yakshagana, Gajaraja, Charlie Chaplin, Owl, Bharathnatya, along with their other wide variety of kites, showcasing cultural diversity of India in general and coastal Karnataka in specific.

 

Team Mangalore had earlier been to France, England and Canada, winning " Best International Kite" award for its kite collections. The Kathakkali kite of Team Mangalore has found its place as the "Largest Kite in India" in the Limca Book of Records.