Kolkata: Kites with the message, “Justice for R G Kar”, printed on them flew off the shelves at Santosh Mitra Square in the lead-up to Viswakarma Puja.
Saikat Dutta, owner of India Kite shop, who came up with this idea, sold more than a thousand such kites in the past week. “We made around 1,200 such kites in the last one week and it turned out to be a best-seller during this period, when business was lean due to the rain and protests.”
Dutta first made 200 kites—the justice message written in white on black paper—and put them on display in his shop.When these got sold off by last Tuesday, he prepared more pieces and all of them sold off by Monday morning. He printed the kites with the message in both Bengali and English.
“The last three days of incessant rain affected our business but the demand for the special R G Kar kites remained high,” said Nepal Das, another kite seller adjacent to the India Kite shop. Down the road, 63-year-old Calcutta Kite shop, too, did brisk business with these ‘justice’ kites. Shop owner Subash Patra said, “We replicated the design and produced 1,500 pieces that were all sold at Rs 15 each.”
Manish Banerjee from Beleghata, who visited the India Kite shop with his eight-year-old son on Monday evening, was disheartened since all the special edition kites were sold out. “As a tradition, we fly kites on Vishwakarma Puja, but this time, I wanted to fly the ‘R G Kar kites’ to support the protest,” said Banerjee, who bought only black kites, not finding the exclusive ones.
Mehmood Khan, who works at a kite shop behind Entally Market, said kite sales had drastically droped in the past five years but he got many queries about the ‘protest’ kites. “We made five such kites,” he said.