Design Yatra was held a day after Janamashtami– Lord Krishna’s Birthday. For those who may not know- Lord Krishna as a baby was very fond of homemade butter and would steal it from his mother’s kitchen all the time. So she started to store the butter in higher places so that Krishna would not steal it. The celebration of the festival is symbolic to Krishna trying to steal the butter. Today Janamashtami is popularly celebrated by setting up a butter and yogurt ceramic pot called a Dahi Handi by hanging it with a rope tied very high (anywhere from 3 – 15 storeys high). Teams of young boys come together form different part of the city and state and form huge human pyramids and attempt to break the Dahi Handi. The winner takes it all0 the butter, money and fame.
So at Design Yatra there was a lot of talk on Social media like Facebook and Twitter and how they are becoming the new form of advertising. How campaigns can go viral on the internet and how superbly cool business strategies are being developed. I wondered about the relevance of these ideas in the Indian context. On one side entire communities come together to celebrate festivals such as Janamshtami, Diwali and such and on the other chances are that very few of these people are connected on the internet.
So is it possible to use such celebrations such as building a human pyramid to create some interesting networks that subsequently become some great campaign. Can we envisage a way of using such greatly linked human network to physically make a campaign viral? Is it possible to take ideas that are successful on the internet and tailor them to become actual part of such celebrations.
I dont quite have the answer. However my friend Gopal shared these amazing pictures from a Mumbai blogger Diti Kotecha. She has taken some phenomenal photos of the human pyramids that attempt to break these Dahi Handis. Maybe like her we need to get out there and actually experience this energy and the trance of this celebration. Maybe virtual living is as good as it gets and somewhere we need to be part of this collective energy as a nation of over a billion. Regardless her photos are beautiful and her documentation is brave. On first glance, my reaction was that there are some things only a man can do and then immediately bit my tongue as I read that these photos were taken by a woman. Wow! Awe- inspiring.
the mad ad girl 
Hey Zazu,
pretty neat and cool post. The funny thing that drew me to this post was I saw a preview to the start of it and it went like this:
“Lord Krishna as a baby was very fond of homemade butter and would steal it from his mother’s kitchen all the time. So she started to store the butter in….”
And I almost fell off my chair guessing where she would store the butter. Even though I knew the answer I almost wondered if there was a different version of the story…. like she stored the butter in…
1. the fridge! (but they didnt have fridges back then)
2. the neighbour’s house (but then the neighbours kids could get to it)
3. the barn (but then the cows might gobble it up – after all the butter was made with the help of the cow’s milk. one might argue they have a right to it)
4. Dabar Chavanprash bottle (you couldnt pay me enough money to eat butter out of a chavanprash bottle because I wouldnt be able to get past its previous funky, greenish-brown goopy, pasty contents)
😀
Very nice post btw. I really enjoyed reading it… once I got past my ideas of where she hid the butter 😀
Ummm Thanks Janu!
Janmastami, Ganesh, Id congregations. Brands are out there on the streets and in the colonies building brands right now. It’s an interesting time to be out on the street. The new mobile service brands and builders seem to be the most visible this year.
Hey thats true. But I am thinking beyond that. Like how many places do you think a group travels to on those fun trucks that we saw. What if they could carry some information with them which in return helps us track them, note their successes and failures and hence being part of the system more. Maybe taking it back on the internet. Less endorsing and more like random acts of kindness.