Saleem Patang

Saleem Patang is tucked away inside the Delhi Gate area. If you know the neighborhood, you know it's a maze of small lanes. We’ve been making and selling kites here for a long time. It’s a family thing, really. The shop is full of paper, bamboo sticks, and thread. You can smell the glue when you walk in. During the kite flying season, this place gets incredibly crowded. We have kites of all sizes and colors hanging from the ceiling. It’s a lot of manual work, sitting on the floor and putting the kites together one by one. Our hands are usually stained with dye or have little cuts from the thread. We don't just sell to kids; plenty of grown men come in looking for the best thread for competitions. Outside the season, we still keep busy preparing for the next big holiday. We don’t have a computer or anything like that to run the shop. Everything is done by hand and recorded in a small book. It’s a traditional business. People come to us because they’ve been coming here since they were little. The Delhi Gate area has a lot of history, and we feel like a small part of it. It’s not a fancy life, but we like the craft. We stay open until late, especially when the weather is good for flying. It is hard work but we are used to the routine of the seasons.