Two regional expressions are especially well known. Around Mathura and Vrindavan, the towns of Krishna's childhood, the festival is the high point of the year, kept with days of celebration, processions and dramatic raslila performances of episodes from his life. And in Maharashtra and parts of the west and south, the day after (or the day itself) brings Dahi Handi (Gopalkala), in which a pot of curd, butter and milk is hung high in the street and teams of young people form human pyramids to reach and break it, recalling the tales of the child Krishna and his friends stealing butter from the high shelves of the cowherd homes.
Dahi Handi has grown into a large, competitive and sometimes commercialised public event, with prize money and, in recent years, official concern over the safety of the tall pyramids. The butter-thieving stories it enacts belong to a wider devotional theme, the delight taken in Krishna's mischievous childhood (bala-lila), which the tradition reads not as mere charm but as the accessibility and playfulness of a God who invites intimacy. Between the solemn midnight worship and the exuberant street festivity, Janmashtami holds together the two faces of Krishna devotion, awe at the descent of the divine and joy in his human nearness.