Kite Festival in Ahmedabad

I walked to locate the ATM that was 2 minutes away but ended up walking for 30 minutes. I missed it totally. I didn’t mind the walk, it’s a good warm up. I asked two girls on their way to a computer class at Manav Sadhna to show me where the ATM was and they took me to Bank of India but they didn’t have ATMs there. I was directed to Bank of Bombay instead and had to cross the bridge. They guy was nice to draw me a map of which I had trouble relating to. People I passed by smiled at me and starred at me. I felt quite comfortable through it all. I followed the map the best I could and I didn’t see the Bank of Bombay ATM after the bridge but I did come across Bank of India ATM by accident, by getting lost. Sometimes you have to get lost to get to where you need to go in the end. Well, at least in my case.

I went to Manav Sadhna and saw the Gramshree project happening on the grounds. These women from the slums are working on quilts, bags, clothing articles to sell under Gramshree Project. All the money goes to the women and then they get to save the proceeds in a bank account. You can check it out on http://www.gramshree.org/

I walked the grounds a bit and just watched what a day at the Gandhi Ashram and Manav Sadhna was like. There were people working on maintaining the grounds.

Then I stopped by and watched children from the boarding school enjoy music from the volunteer guitarist.
Then I went into the office and the kite assembly was in mass production everything was made from scratch and designed by volunteers to get it in time for the Kite festival. On the kite a verse on saying no to intoxicants and addictions were printed as part of the design. These kites are made for distribution for students at the school and also at the vision and hearing impaired boarding school. The kite festival is about kites flown in the air and the string is made of fiber glass so that each kite flier can cut off another kite off the air. It’s a kite fighting competition. The first thing I thought of when I heard it was, “what are the casualties and the injuries involved in all of this with humans and birds.”

Nirali has a group formed to pass out flyers that educated people about not using fiber glass to save the birds and also a phone number people can call to report injured bird that need to be picked up for medical care. It’s really her heart and soul and her project. She is the it in the project. There really isn’t much of a group helping her in her crusade to save the birds.