'Dahi Handi' A Prized Tradition, Has Ruined Many Lives

Breaking the Dahi Handi may be a prized tradition, but the 'sport' has ruined many lives.

- Prachi Pinglay Plumbar

Every year the mill district of Mumbai adds more swanky glass buildings, more traffic, more people. Each new, shiny apartment squeezes out an old chawl, making the lives of its dwellers that much smaller, less important and more sombre. One such creaking sprawl in the heart of Parel is Vani chawl. Displayed prominently is a notice warning the building is unsafe. A dark wooden stairway—a couple of missing steps are supported by bamboos—leads to the one-room second-floor house of Dayanand Bhadvankar, which is home to his family of five. Dayanand hasn’t stepped out of this room for six years—he has been in bed with a broken spine, a result of his heroics in the dangerous Dahi Handi festival during Janmashtami.

The Parel-Dadar area, dotted with many chawls like Vani, is a hub of public celebrations such as Dahi Handi and Ganesh Chaturthi. Every year on Janmashtami (birthday of the Hindu god Krishna), public hospitals are on high alert to receive the ‘govindas’ injured while participating in human pyramids to break pots filled with curd hanging in the air. And yet, a recent Supreme Court verdict setting the maximum legal height of the pyramids at 20 feet and the minimum age of participants at 18 has outraged the Shiv Sena, Raj Thackeray’s MNS and the organising groups popularly called mandals, who say the courts can’t curb their religious enthusiasm.

Many govindas, however, who risk their lives for upholding traditions and culture, feel secretly relieved due to the court’s order, for they know the horrors of life after a Dahi Handi accident. “Mine was the first accident in 60 years for our mandal. I was in coma for 20-25 days. Initially, the mandal, family and friends came to my aid, but it didn’t last and I had no insurance,” Dayanand, now 32, recalls.