Art Street: Dedicated to govinda pathaks, this sculpture talks the best about Mazgaon Tadwadi

The sculpture was built last year by the then local corporator Sonam Jamsutkar. (Express photo)

Talking to the Indian Express, Manoj said, “We wanted to come up with something that represented the local culture. There was nothing that did that as much as our local Mazgaon Tadwadi govinda pathaks that have held several records when it comes to the number of tiers formed to break the dahi handi. Such is the attachment to the govinda pathak, that even those who have moved away from Tadwadi, still visit the locality during dahi handi. Hence, we decided to create a sculpture honouring them.”

The Tadwadi govinda pathak is well known for the multiple tiers using which they manage to scale the highest of dahi handis. They are known to have managed nine tiers to break the dahi handi in the past.

Once a decision was made to recreate the Tadwadi govinda Pathak, the next decision was the execution. It was time for Santosh Todankar and his team to work their magic around the idea. Todankar said, “It took a team of at least 15 persons to come up with the sculpture. Mainly we used fibre for setting up the structure. If you look closely, there are musical instruments like dholak, shehnai that have been included in the sculpture. There is also a coach who can be seen guiding the govindas.”

He added, “The number of people that we could include in the set up was dependent on the place available on the traffic island. So, some of the decisions were dependent on practical aspects.”