Govinda Aala Re Aala

After about 4 yrs I am in mumbai at the time of Govinda festival.Went around to enjoy the fun.First to chembur, saw the govinda at chembur naka.They had even organised lavani dance. Then there was one at chembur station.Came back to seawoods.There were lots of Dahi handi's everywhere.In every five minutes of dirve you could hear govinda music in front of some dahi-handi.Everywhere on the streets where seen trucks full of govinda's.In Nerul , participated in a small dahi handi.When the handi was broken and the curd water fell on me , felt blessed. Enjoyed the day very much.

Some observations

1)There are about 600 dahi handi mandals.Considering each mandal has about 40 people , it makes 24000 people. Thats a huge number of people who practice for months for this one day.

2) Lavni dance performance was seen everywhere.This could be Raj Thackeray effect, but i guess the credit goes more to movie Natarang and its fantastic lavni songs composed by Ajay-Atul.

3) English media seems to give very little coverage to such "Indian" festivals.I think they still think anything "Indian" is down-market and doesn't go well with their brand image. 

4) NCP, ShivSena , Manase and even RPI were seen organising the festival all over the city.BJP and Congress were not seen to be too enthusiastic about this.Same can be observed for ganesh festival , Navratri. I wonder what stops national parties from celebrating local festivals and event.

5) I was able to enjoy as i was on vacation and not working and hence had entire day to participate in the festival.I wonder why cant we have a holiday on all festivals. Agreed we have lot many festivals, but then i still dont think they are too many.The loss to economy would be there, but then whats the point of gains, when we cant enjoy those gains.We kindoff  have a mindset , if west have less holidays, we should also not have more. Also even this loss can be compensated by making sunday working on the weekend on which there is festival off.

We can find ways to enjoy festivals , make them much more bigger, inclusive and socially beneficial if we want to. I think we need to.Till then , Jara Matki Sambhal Brijbala :)