Janmashtmi

By Anwesha Chowdhury

 

Janmashtami also known as Gokulashtami marks the celebration of the birth of Lord Sri Krishna. Drum beats and music woke Mumbaikers up on Thursday 12th August’10 to celebrate the festival. Govindas reached the venues to form human pyramids to break the 'dahi handis' at various places in Mumbai. Dahi Handi is a famous celebration of Mumbaikers on Janmashtami, in which pots of curd are suspended at a height. Young govindas form a human pyramid to reach the Dahi Handi. The group of successful govindas are paid a huge amount. Dahi handi is the celebration of the spirit of Lord Krishna, who loved eating butter and broke earthen containers to get them.

Like all the other festivals celebrated in this college, Dahi Handi is one of the major ones. Hostelites celebrate this festival with a lot of enthusiasm every year and this year was as equal a success as all the other years.

Venue was the college parking lot. The college authorities agreed to give us music systems, water pipes, etc. and made the event even more fun! The small earthen “handi” was filled with a lot of curd (“dahi”), milk, turmeric, etc. We held a small prayer ceremony and also distributed Prasad. After the puja was performed, guys started sprinkling water and even the faculty present over there was completely drenched by the end of it! Then finally started the attempts to reach the suspended Handi. Three completely unsuccessful trials, one which almost had one of our Govindas falling down badly, IHM boys broke the Handi in the fourth attempt! Happiness and enthusiasm swept amongst the other girls and boys hostelites assembled there.

It was completely entertaining as  everyone danced on the popular boolywood numbers and specially by Chetan Sir and Rishabh Sir with their “Housekeeping” Dance, “FnB” dance and then the superhit "Kitchen - Chopping" dance by Chef Iyer followed by lifting up Chef Iyer high in the air. Sequeira Mam also joined the party dance and everyone had a great time.

“Govinda Ala Re”, “Chandi ke daal par”, etc. are few of the many songs which were continuously being played by the maintenance staff with the help of some Third Years. A very important aspect of our excitement was the uniform Bagpiper t-shirts circulated during the event by one of our fellow batch-mates. The end of the event was marked by the distribution of Jalebis, Samosas, etc. and probably it was the funniest part too because we could see almost all the exhausted hostelites squatting down on the ground to eat their portion! 

We hope that IHM Mumbai will see even more enjoyable Dahi Handi celebrations in the upcoming years!