Listening: the Kite Festival

On page 148 of your book, Poorvi, you listen to a talk about the Kite Festival in India. Some of the book's sentences about it have wrong words, and you correct them. Your teacher will read or play the talk; its words are on page 163. Here is what it tells, in short.

The Kite Festival is a popular festival in India. It takes place at Makar Sankranti, in the month of January. People fly kites from their terraces and rooftops and take part in kite-flying competitions, and you can see kites of many shapes, sizes and colours.

In Western India the festival is celebrated as Uttarayan. Gujarat is its main centre, but Uttarayan is also celebrated in Rajasthan and Telangana. In Karnataka, the Tourism Department holds a Kite Festival once every year. Punjab flies kites at Baisakhi and Basant Panchami. And people all across India fly kites to celebrate Independence Day, too.

So the book's wrong sentences are put right like this: the festival is in January (not June); Uttarayan is in Western India (not Eastern India); it is also celebrated in Rajasthan (not Maharashtra); and people fly kites on Independence Day (not Earth Day).

Kites are very old in India. On page 149 your book says they are found in the poems of Namadeva, a Marathi saint and poet of the thirteenth century. In his poems he called a kite a 'gudi', and he tells that kites were made of 'kaagad', which means paper.