Chennai: Forty-year-old V Rajalakshmi lives in a nondescript house in Kolathur, where kite-flying is not a popular pastime. But since March 7, the house is known as the one belonging to the man killed by a kite thread. Rajalaksmi's husband Sivaprakasam - the sole breadwinner of her family — bled to death in front of his 73-year-old father, after a stray manja thread sliced into his throat on the Anakaputhur Bypass Road. Till then, for Rajalakhsmi and her two daughters, manja accidents were the occasional story in newspapers.The government does not keep an account of manja deaths, but a report said the deadly thread had caused at least 18 accidents between 2012 and 2015, claiming four lives. Then manja was banned. "Since the prohibitory order against the sale and use of manja in 2015, incidents of casualties have significantly decreased," says inspector P Jawahar of the Washermenpet police station. But he agrees that, as with most things banned, those manufacturing and selling manja - kite string coated with ground glass or metal that imbue with razor sharp abrasiveness - have located spots least likely to be raided and found ways to sell it from there. For instance, the manja that killed Sivaprakasam was traced to a store in Tambaram "the size of a showroom," as Rajalakshmi alleges. "This is outrageous since it has been banned. How can you even sell the manja publicly as merchandise?" she demands.Kite enthusiasts, who get into duels and betting over whose kite would cut the other's, prefer manja for its sharpness-- the same quality that makes it an invisible knife in air.In traditional kite-flying neighbourhoods such as Washermenpet, Sowcarpet and Tondiarpet nowadays, any query about kite sellers is met with hostile silence. In Washermenpet's Narayanappa Garden lane - still known to many locals as kaathadi theru, or 'kite street' - what was once the biggest kite shop is now a tiffin centre by evening and an obscure living room by the day. Once kite sellers, Meenakshi* and her husband Kumaravel* laze around watching primetime television serials post lunch and get up to start preparing the dough for the evening chapatti a little later. While those living around this tapered but vivacious neighbourhood of sweet shops, flour mills and pawn brokers identify Meenakshi's as the shop they once bought their best kites and threads from, Meenakshi turns defensive at the very mention of manja loops."We sold only kites, not manja," she snaps. "And yet, after Diwali last year, policemen barged into the shop and took away our products amounting to almost `2 lakh. They broke them up, and dumped them at the end of the street. We kept waving the court order that identified the sale of manja and not kites as punishable, but no one listened," she says.Business for many kite sellers like Meenakshi was disrupted in October 2015, when police issued a prohibitory order banning kite flying with glass-coated manja for 60 days, in the process restricting the sale of kites too. It came on the heels of a casualty in September 2015 that killed five-year-old Ajay, who, while riding on a bike with his father in Perambur, was killed by a stray manja thread. The order was an addition to an existent ban on the sale and use of manja under Section 71 of the City Police Act, and attracted charges under more sections.In December 2016, the Chennai Kite Manufacturers Association and the Tamil Nadu Kite Flyers Association filed a plea in the Madras high court to direct the Chennai police commissioner to allow the manufacturing and sale of kites that did not use manja. However, citing the accidents caused by manja, the bench, headed by justice B Rajendran, turned it down.D Jayakumar, one of the traders representing the body in the case, has shut down his kite business in Washermenpet and switched to making house grills in a small workshop. "We were asked to shut shop, but weren't given alternatives. Those who sold kites now run flour mills or small-time eateries. Several have gone back to their villages," he says, choosing to evade any discussion on manja."Although they say they want to only sell kites, where's the evidence that traders who want to be in business aren't going to sell glass-coated threads too? It is after all a part of the same sport," says advocate R Gobika, who represented the state in the case.A resident of Park Town near Chennai Central remembers kite duels as a colourful tradition passionately upheld by the kite selling community in the area, which since the ban, he says, has vanished, "at least from the public eye." However, the killer thread continues to be sold. Residents living in traditional kite-flying neighbourhoods say that at times it is brought from other cities and sold stealthily.Manja was also banned by the National Green Tribunal in December 2016 until February this year, after People for, Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a petition seeking a ban on kite-flying during the Makar Sankaranti season. "Thousands of birds are killed every year when they are cut or trapped by manja, which can get caught on trees or buildings for weeks," reads a statement from the organisation.Despite these restrictions, manja is easily available on e-commerce platforms such as eBay, which openly markets it as "extreme sharpness kite flight cord for those who never compromise," selling 1,000 yards for `330. In fact, DIY manja-making techniques can be easily found online. Instances like these show that people will always find a way to work around the law, and there are equal chances that the sport will continue discreetly.A workable solution would be to creatively build on a tradition like kite-flying, while ameliorating its negative parts, says professor T Sundararaman of Tata Institute of Social Sciences."While the glass-coated manja needs to be banned, it would be an overreach to prohibit kite-flying itself. Such a move will lead to that social space being taken over by something else that's far more dangerous. Kite-flying could instead be remade the viewers' sport, wherein enthusiasts compete on the colour, size and height of their kites' flight. Cutting other's kites is not in the spirit of the competition," he says.(*Names changed)

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