It's Festival Season!

It’s festival season! The Muslim festival of Ramadan will culminate in Eid very soon, and today was the Hindu festival of Janmashtami, or also Dahihandi (I think that’s how one might spell it)—a celebration of the Lord Krishna. Apparently, when he was a baby, he loved butter so much that he used to climb into the container. Either he was a tiny baby, or that was a vat of lard. Or maybe he’s just Krishna.

The general scene.

Janmashtami: think city wide treasure hunt extreme sport style. There are 4 key elements: the pot, the neighborhood, the team, and the prize. The pot is the treasure—a clay pot containing milk and spices hung high above the street in the number two element: the neighborhood. The area is decorated with marigolds and traditional motifs—the upscale neighborhoods might even have a stage, lights, a sound system, and a crane to hang it on. For whom? For the third element, the team. Teams are comprised of 25-50 people, mostly males, who proceed to ride around in buses or trucks to these different neighborhoods and form human pyramids 10 people high to reach this pot in hopes of breaking it. Teams from the nearby states even come to Mumbai to participate. I fibbed a little when I said the clay pot was the treasure being hunted. The real treasure is the cash prize (element number 4) a team receives for breaking it. The neighborhoods collect donations as a celebration of Krishna and then turn it into the prize for being the first team to break the pot.

A team gets ready to rumble! (orange shirts)

I happened to be outside when the pot in my neighborhood was broken—oh boy. A bunch of trucks pulled up and these guys clambered out. I looked away for a minute, which almost turned out to be a mistake because when I looked back they had already assembled half the distance necessary to get to the pot. (Because of the weight factor, it is usually a child that climbs to the top. The few girls I saw participate were doing that job.) Within minutes, they had broken through the clay, sending milk showering down on everyone holding them up. The crowd went wild! And then disappeared. It was almost comical how quickly it dispersed.

Starting the pyramid-the pot is hiding in the marigold garlands.

Janmashtami is extremely dangerous. Several people die or are paralyzed yearly. And yet it remains a very popular event. This year a good 200+ were sent to hospitals in the region, but only 80 needed to be hospitalized. Apparently, that makes this a pretty good year. Ajay and I went around to a few other sites, but since they had been broken already, we just saw the aftermath, which was almost as interesting.

Up, Up and Away

I'm standing on the light platform of the Dahisar  (E)  site, post pot breakage.