Dahi Handi Govinda Human Pyramids

For one afternoon at the tail end of the monsoon, Mumbai hands its streets over to human architecture. Dahi Handi is the Maharashtrian celebration of Gopalkala, observed on the day after Krishna Janmashtami, and it takes the old story of the butter-stealing child Krishna and turns it into a civic sport.

• An earthen pot, the handi, is filled with curd, butter, puffed rice and a little prize money, strung from a rope high above a junction, and then teams of young men and women called govindas climb onto one another's shoulders until the smallest climber at the top can reach up and smash it.
• Curd rains down, the crowd roars, and the whole thing resets two streets away.
• The teams are organised into govinda pathaks, neighbourhood troupes that train for weeks in local maidans, rehearsing the base ring, the shoulder locks and, above all, the fall.
• A pyramid is counted in thars, or tiers: four and five are routine, while the celebrated pathaks attempt seven, eight or more.
• The dense mill-district neighbourhoods of Dadar and Worli are the traditional heartland, with other big handis at Jogeshwari, Ghatkopar and across the creek in Thane.
• Traffic is diverted, sound systems and dhol-tasha troupes take over, water is sprayed from building terraces, and the chant of "Govinda ala re" carries for blocks.
• Watching costs nothing and is purely a street affair, but it demands some sense.
• Arrive by suburban train rather than by car, because the roads around the major handis are barricaded and parking effectively vanishes.
• The festival has also been the subject of a long safety debate: courts and the Maharashtra government have at different times set limits on pyramid height and on the minimum age of participants, and organisers now routinely use helmets, harnesses, crash mats and standby ambulances.
• The rules shift from year to year, so follow police barricades and marshals rather than assumptions, stay outside the fall zone, and keep children beside you, since crowds surge hard when a pyramid comes down.
• Gopalkala is vegetarian by definition; the prasad shared afterwards is a simple mix of beaten rice, curd, cucumber and green chilli.
• Dadar West, a short walk from the Shivaji Park handis, happens to be one of the better parts of the city for a pure-vegetarian meal, with long-running Maharashtrian snack houses around Gokhale and Ranade Roads serving sabudana vada, batata vada, misal, thalipeeth, piyush and kokam sarbat, and Matunga a couple of stops away for South Indian eating houses.
• Mumbai is also a major seafood city, so never assume a kitchen is meat-free: look for a board that says pure vegetarian or shuddha shakahari, and confirm at the counter before you order, especially at the temporary festival-day stalls that appear along the route.