The street between Purana Pul and Mangalhat in the old city is awash with mutli-coloured kites, balls of coloured thread and other paraphernalia needed for flying kites. As Sankranti draws closer, the hub of kite trade in the city is a noisy hubhub. “There are more shops now than ever before,” says Manoj Singh of Bharat Kites, one of the oldest and biggest kite shops in the city.
And thereby hangs a tale.
Three years after the crackdown that shut the industry that manufactured bootleg liquor known as gudumba , many of the men involved in the trade shifted to kite business. The result: a sharp surge in the number of shops that sell kites in the area.
Low profit
“I quit the gudumba industry as there was too much pressure from the police. The risk was high. This is much better, though the margins are lower. The profit margin is just 10% in the kite business, but there is no pressure except for the occasional raid for Chinese manja,” says Dharam Singh, a reformed bootlegger who switched to selling kites and idols three years ago.
Bulk purchases
The area known as Dhoolpet is one of the biggest trade centres for kites in Telangana along with the area near Gulzar Houz near Charminar. Traders from across the State as well as from the neighbouring States like Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh come to the city to buy stocks in bulk.
Akshay Singh too was formerly in the gudumba trade. Now he sells kites and idols. “
This is a low-profit trade. While others have taken to driving cabs, or become delivery executives and taken up other trades, I have switched to this. For Ganesha puja, we get small idols from different places in Maharashtra and sell them here. For kites, Hyderabad is a big centre,” says Mr. Singh, who started his business three years ago.
