Kite (patang or guddi in Punjab) flying has been one of the major cultural activities for the people of the Subcontinent, especially of Punjab. Kite flying is popular on Lohri and Baisakhi. Kite flying festivals and competitions were popular even before and during the time of Maharajah Ranjit Singh and remained so in undivided Punjab, Lahore being the main hub, especially during Basant. Vadodara, Surat and Ahmedabad are the other main cities where kite-flying is considered and celebrated as a festival known as Makar Sankranti (Uttarayan), which marks the beginning of spring and welcomes the sun after long winters.

The environment of competition in Punjab became the principal reason for specialization in Manjha making since competition encouraged to use sharper and sharper Manjha to cut the kites of the competitors. The Manjha makers therefore had to come up with Manjhas with great quality and this gave rise to the tradition of Manjha making with secrets that lived through oral transmission of knowledge. The dor that is used in Punjab is prepared from pure cotton thread, prepared from multiple thin fibers. The number of fibers determines the strength of the dor.

The traditional art of dor making still survives in pockets. The addas of dor makers, where the thread is processed and matured with crushed glass (shisha), rice flour and adhesives, which were seen at every road of the city over a decade ago, are no longer visible. Mangal Singh, of Sultanwind, Amritsar, is one of the few remaining dor makers. His adda is called Bhajan Singh after his elder brother’s name. Mangal Singh is the third generation doing this work but knows for certain that there is no hope for his children in taking up this work which is almost non-existent now.

He says that with the Chinese khooni (killer) dor flooding the market, their traditional art of making shisha dor has almost disappeared now. He said people used to place orders weeks in advance to lay their hands on a charkhari (roll) of sangal dor. The sangal dor was the strongest thread in those times, but now, it is no match for the plastic ones. Up until the 1990s, residents of Amritsar would remember every nook and corner of the city had these addas where people used to wait for weeks to get their sangal dor made and processed.

The Chinese dor/ plastic dor/ dragon dor is not a regular cotton thread which is used to fly kites. It is made of nylon or synthetic thread and is treated with glass to make it sharper. Monofilament fishing lines are also used to make the kit strings. Monofilament strings, made by melting polymers, are hard to break. Coated with glass this dor has injured and killed many. It has deeply wounded killed birds.

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