Govardhan Puja is tomorrow, and I thought you might enjoy discovering the fascinating slice of religion, culture and history it embodies on the southern outskirts of Delhi-NCR, particularly in the twin villages of Asola and Fatehpur Beri. If you rejoice in having friends with deep rural roots, you get invited to their pujas, weddings and family feasts, and experience a side of Old India that we city sparrows rarely get to see.
My old neighbours, who became friends, had centuries-old ancestral lands in Asola and Fatehpur Beri and took me there to observe Govardhan Puja. It is dedicated to Sri Krishna’s feat of lifting Mount Govardhan to save his people from Indra Dev’s tempestuous fury. On my first visit, we got there an hour before sunset. I walked with them around the cattle sheds, marking the cows’ foreheads with tilak and hanging marigold garlands around their necks. Of course, I spent the nicest time with the endearing little calves, whom I tried to coax near me to eat a handful of grass freshly cut for this ceremony.
The village barber’s wife, who received clothes, money and sweets for this ceremonial rite, had fashioned a large outline in cow dung of a man on the ground of a mud courtyard. Marigolds were sprinkled around it, and clay lamps and stalks of sugarcane were set about it. This was the Govardhan Purush or Giriraj Maharaj. The farmhands and the men of the house circled it seven times, ceremonially singing Sri Krishna’s name.
After which, we all sat together to eat our simple but satisfying dinner. We had chhaach—real village buttermilk, the kind Sri Krishna must have drunk in Gokul—together with stuffed parathas out of a big, round stainless steel box brought from home. The prasad drew a surprised laugh from me the first time I saw it. It was gulgule, little fried dumplings of wheat flour, ghee and jaggery.
An old-fashioned sweet, much like the rice-flour, ghee and jaggery adhirasam of South Indian festivals. What ancient choices of the subcontinent was that testimony to? Cowbells sounded in the background, and the gentle chimes drew a smile. Like many people in cities, I had hung a wind chime on my balcony, and when my neighbours dropped by, they said the sound reminded them of the cows in their village.
The peaceful twilight, the clean air, the scent of grass and vegetation, and the wind in the trees were relaxing and meditative. My friends took me to the next holding, where a group of seniors in white dhoti-kurtas, wearing turbans, sat on cane chairs and puffed by turn on a hookah. After we paid our respects, my friends said, “Please tell our friend here (meaning me) something about the history of our village.” We took our places on string cots set out near them.
Steel glasses of ginger tea and more gulgule magically appeared, and I waited expectantly. “Do you know anything about our village already?” asked one elder. “Tauji (elder uncle), I know you’re the strongest men in India,” I said. The elders laughed indulgently because it was true. If you search for ‘India’s strongest village’ on the net, the results show links related to Asola and Fatehpur Beri.
It is famous as the ‘Bouncer Hub’, supplying hundreds of nightclub bouncers, private security personnel and bodyguards across New Delhi. It has a famously strong physical culture. Young men in the community are massively focused on traditional wrestling, high-protein diets, daily pushups and weight training, with strict abstinence from tobacco and alcohol. It embodies scenes from the film Dangal.
Wrestler Vijay Tanwar, who pioneered bouncer culture in the area, missed a spot on the Olympic team and became a bouncer in the 2000s, turning traditional akharas (wrestling pits) into training grounds for modern private security. Its most famous son was big-built, super-strong Neeraj Pepsu, who became a digital deity after his sudden, sad passing and remains a cult figure online among Gujjar youth in Delhi NCR and Haryana.
The Gujjars fought mediaeval invaders turn by turn, and challenged the East India Company in 1857. When the British finally won, they were very angry with the Gujjars of this region who blocked their supplies and impeded their progress. I heard that in one village, the British lined up all the males between the ages of ten and seventy, and shot them dead. As an old fighting race, the Gujjars trace their ancestry to the Pandavas— let’s remember that the Pandavas and Kauravas were actually from this region.
But over time, they shifted from being soldiers to farmers. However, their old fighting blood still sings in them, and so their passion for physical culture has a historical basis that they reinvented for modern times. For several reasons, Govardhan Puja is almost as important as Diwali in these agrarian communities on Delhi’s rural fringes, like Asola and Fatehpur Beri. For one, the local population has deep roots in farming and dairy work.
Because Govardhan Puja is fundamentally tied to honouring Gau Mata and nature’s bounty, village communities treat it as a crucial day to thank Krishna for safeguarding their crops, cattle and livelihoods. In Asola and Fatehpur Beri, the festival is a major social and religious bonding event, featuring bhajan mandalis and Annakut, a delicious, vegetableloaded dish that signifies Earth’s abundance. I got to taste it another time, but that first Govardhan Puja remains an evergreen memory.
(Views are personal)
Read all columns by Renuka Narayanan
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