Gokulashtami started because Krishna's mom had the same idea as mine: when your kid wants some food that's not so good for them, elevate it. While my mom had the "lady jar" of cookies and candy in the high cupboard, the deity's mother combatted Krishna's penchant for ghee (yes, that's clarified butter) by hanging a clay pot of the good stuff from a rope by just under the ceiling of their home. To honor Krishna on his birthday the people of the state of Maharashtra suspend clay pots from several stories up in plazas and along streets and compete in building human pyramids to break the pots, which rain a fuchsia liquid. The lucky kid at the zenith happens to break the pots with his or her head, which seems to have no specific ceremonial significance, but works to offset the balance of the pyramid more times than not. Said kid is also often wearing a neon bike helmet, which is advisable since medics are attentive but supplies are minimal.The picture to the right shows a group of neighborhood guys around the boys' hostel in Sion hanging the pot the night before on a rope with gorgeous floral arrangements. Krishna was born at midnight, so there's a traditional puja, or worship service for him at that time. The photos below show the puja set-up and sweet cakes at the business school on Tuesday. Captain Kanade, the pesticide and internet superhero (our contact for all things lodging) is standing next to the man with the tray.
After several practice rounds and a puja out back, the Welingkar Institute mens' and womens' Dahi Handi teams mounted the steps at the front of the building while students who were not participating sprayed them with garden hoses and tossed flours and confetti from the first balcony. Meanwhile, sneaky cafeteria employees, maids and security guards dumped buckets of water on the crowd and the students on the balcony below, leaping away from the railings when the victims craned their necks back. The band was deafening and the students, who are from all over India, competed in terms of regional dancing. I kept getting pulled into circles and getting laughed at as I tried to imitate each style.
This picture shows the sopping result of instruments, confetti, hoses, buckets, and previously unwashed Welingkar Institute blue t-shirts, whose dyes ran with abandon. Below is a shot of onlookers on Napoo Street, facing the steps.
This shot to the right shows the smallest member of the boy's team breaking the ghee pot outside the school, which was a thrill to watch, but the two tour buses and three cargo trucks were waiting to take us to Thane, an area north of Matunga, where 25,000 people were rumored to have gathered every year. You can see the red cargo trucks in the pictures of Napoo: these are the propellers of the Indian economy. Transport of cargo by train is highly unionized ($), regulated ($$), and yet also corrupt($$$), so companies use these trucks to haul goods from manufacturing centers to cities. They all have "GOODS CARRIER" artistically painted on the front and "HORN OK PLEASE" in the same style on the back. This is due to the fact that side mirrors are a liability in the close traffic of Mumbai and a luxury that is often quickly reappropriated everywhere, so it's necessary to sound your horn to indicate that you're behind someone. The city is harmoniously filled with call-and-response beeps of all shapes and sizes. They call it "horning."
As you can see, the trucks are commandeered on Gokulashtami to haul Dahi Handi teams to competition sites. Our truck is in the background. I got to spend a half-hour holding on to the high sides, listening to students singing Hindi songs and teaching American camp songs (we came up with "Roll Over" and "The Ants Go Marching" -- strong refrains being key) while the scenery whizzed by on an Indian highway. We were of course soaked from earlier, but the students had the ingenious (if not original, apparently) idea of throwing and smearing pink/red powder liberally on each other, the truck, and us.
So we arrived in Thane, wet and hoarse, turning everything we touched a little purple, and were informed that it was not a very safe crowd for women, so the men were to link arms in a large circle around us, and we were to move as a unit to the plaza. By "not a safe crowd for women," they meant that our group contained the only women present, among thousands of people. Women had just begun competing in Dahi Handi events two years ago, apparently, and they have not yet become sightseers. We were herded over to the foot of the main stage with much urgency, which turned out to be a great vantage point. DJ Akil, a big name in India, was dropping "Pump Up the Jam" as we arrived, seguing into Indian favorites later on, like the one that you dance to by leaning in and out of the circle (like the hokey pokey, but with class). My music education has not really gotten off the ground here. . .Both Welingkar Teams successfully maintained their pyramids from start to finish, and while the international students were congratulating them, we realized that we were being summoned onstage. We climbed plastic stacking chairs to get to the stage, where the MC welcomed us by telling Indians that the country has reached a point where foreigners are seeking to educate themselves here. He pulled my friend Stella to the front, and announced that the Chicagoan who has lived in Switzerland for the past two years had come all the way from Africa. She demurely refrained from mentioning that she had in fact come farther. Then we were all invited to dance onstage, which was a little embarrassing, especially when I learned that I'd made it to a Hindi newscast. Here are some views from the main stage:
Actually, a female onlooker did arrive while we were in Thane, clad in a lacy tanktop, jeans, and plenty of makeup. We asked our friends who she was as she addressed the crowd. The answer: a celebrity, which should have been evident by her close attention to maintaining a pale skin color, which is a big deal here--the #1 skincare brand is Fair and Lovely, which used to run commercials showing that darker-skinned women couldn't get married. Apparently, it was anyone's guess as to which celebrity this celebrity was, though, despite the hue. (I guess I'm not the only one claiming to be almost famous. . .)
The highest pyramid that I saw is featured below--six stories!! As you can see, the team was nowhere near touching the ghee pot, which had an uncanny trick of raising and lowering for different teams, which may have been due to different divisions of participation, whims, bribes, or, of course, the will of Krishna. The Welingkar teams' pujas had worked, and they walked home with trophies, a given for the Welingkar womens' team which faced no rival Thane Toppling Queens or Sion Stacking Stormtroopers, for example. The last picture shown is the one that ran in the Times of India. I should be getting a burned copy of the Hindi newscast soon, but I don't know how likely I am to want to share it! The next festival, right after my September-term finals, is Ganesh Chaturthi, where elephant-sized statues of Ganesh are paraded into the Arabian Sea, statues being the only thing to safely submerge in the oceans here, unfortunately. As a side note, I'm getting a better handle on Hindi, and while almost everyone around Mumbai has been very open and kind, I've met a few people who I'm getting to know better outside of our group of international Temple students, which is doing wonders to combat the stir-crazy nature of cooping 15 people together in the same room for 36+ hours of lectures a week! My October-December schedule will free things up, and I'll have more time to get a more holistic experience, and more time to write, too.
