Vaishnav Parivar of New Zealand has been a pioneer in hosting one of the biggest cultural festivals of the Indian community in Auckland, the Kite Festival.
Celebrated on the occasion of Makar Sankranti, this festival is observed with immense excitement within the community with cultural events and flying kites.
Vaishnav Parivar successfully hosted the twelfth year of the kite festival at Eastdale Reserve in Avondale on Sunday, January 14 with approximately 8,000 people turning up for the event, the highest footfalls to date.
The kite festival indeed has seen growth every year with more food stalls, play activities for children, and not-to-miss entertainment by the local talents of the community.
The most significant factor for the success of this festival was the commitment of the organisers to give the community a hassle-free opportunity to have a complete family day out.
The reserve is famous for its enormous open space that gave the opportunity to the visitors to enjoy the festivity by camping their tents, reserving their family spaces and enjoying the festive ambience.
To complement a good family event were numerous food stalls serving different Indian delicacies. To engage children, there were various fun activities arranged such as face painting, henna, children bungees, play car rides, bouncy castles and suchlike.
One of the most beautiful scenes at the event was not just the amazingly designed kites soaring high in the blue skies but also the elders who were teaching their children how to fly kites.
“I come to the kite festival every year. Flying kites is one of the many activities I do with my two children every year, without fail,” a visitor at the event told The Indian Weekender.
Children could be seen jumping with their kites while the elders were holding the kite spool and then flying a kite together with their family members and friends.
Another attraction at the event in the entertainment section was a garba dance performed by the senior women. A few women rose from the big tent and started dancing to the garba music, and in a few minutes, other women joined them and made a circle of more than 50 women dancing at a time.
The organizers were overwhelmed with such a huge footfall as they sold out every kite, thread and spool they had in their stall at the event and even the food counters went short of their stock toward the end of the event.
Former Black Caps player Tarun Nethula and current opening batsman of the Black Caps Jeet Raval also visited the event and engaged with their fans.
The organizers also hosted lucky draws giving out vouchers and cash prizes to the winners and Aruna Tailor won a four-day holiday package for two people to the Gold Coast, Australia, including accommodation.
“Like every year, we received very positive feedback from the visitors present the event. We look forward to seeing better turnout for next year’s kite festival,” President and coordinator for Vaishnav Parivar of New Zealand told The Indian Weekender.
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