Fun Filled Evening at Central Hower.....Diwali 2003

Last night we had our Diwali function at the Central hower high school......its just outside the University Campus. It was selected as the venue as its not far for the Indian Students to walk down to the function and also has a very good auditorium....3 of the past 4 diwali functions have been held at the high school.

It was a fun evening.....all of us enjoyed it.....there were a lot of americans and other internationals at the party...more than usual....but the student turnout was not as expected but anyways we had a crowd of abt 350.......the Mayor of Akron attended the function for the first time and the president of the University Dr. Proenza also attended the celebrations.....the first 15-20 minutes of the program were made boring by the countless speeches.....they were supposed to be scheduled such that the speeches will be between programs.....but Dr.Midha had his own ideas....Rajesh and hemant (MC's for the evening) had their script written for good opening remarks and to make a nice platform for the whole show to launch.....but Dr.Midha took over the mike and just wrote his own script.....he should have let the MC's know what he had planned on doing. THere was a good slide show depicting Ramayana and the significance of Diwali.....I think the student President should be given the oppurtunity to start the evening as they work their...xxxx's....off to make the show happen....it happened even last year....I had prepared a speech regarding the significance of Diwali and how it is celebrated in india........Dr.Midha went on stage first and spoke abt diwali...and abt everything else that I wanted to talk ....so when i went on stage I said "Dr.Midha said everything that i wanted to say.....so i have nothing else to say...enjoy ur evening.." and the same thing happened this year with Madhu....poor girl...she didnt have anything to say as Dr.Midha and the other speakers killed the first 20 minutes which included the intro....


anyways....the cultural program started with a Bharatanatyam....it was performed by a cute little girl....she was really good and had nice expressions....I guess thats the key to Bharatanatyam...Bhushan and Co....then performed a skit that was based on the choices we make abt coming to america or to stay back....it was nice play....though some of the situations were exaggerated. Our (Mine and Rajesh's) variety singing was next.....we had just practiced once....the night before....we sang 8 songs....all of them were sung with lyrics of one song in the tune of the other....it was well received by the audience....we were encouraged by the response and that encouraged us to perform better in the rest of the program..... our next performance was the play....the bollywood spoof "teri biwi sirf meri" it also generated a good response from the audience. the play had all the typical bollywood dialogues, characters and situation...so it was well appreciated.....i could hear a lot of people laughing....but Sapna's laughter was above all.....we could hear it distinctly heheheheheheh.......I was scared that Madhu and Adi will have a fit of laughter on the stage....I dont thing we had a single practice in without either of them bursting out of laughter.....but they controlled it on stage so the scenes turned out great. Vikas....Sacheeen....was the star of the evening....at least with our play....his every action and dialogue drew laughs and claps.......Mrityu was also very good in his short but a dynamic role of "Shine master kachra"......Adi was majestic in his kings role "Raja Gajendra Singh".....Madhu and Rajesh "Chandu aur pappu"....were the lead pair for the play.....they have made their identities now....from now on they will be addressed as Chandu and pappu.......but the main attraction of the evening was the dialogue "yeh lijiye boost" by Honey venkatesh (I mean, Hari Venkatesh).......

Our Dance went well too......I was actually tenses before the dance....trying to remember all the steps so that i wouldnt mess up the efforts of the others.....we practised hard for more than a week....with 2 hrs everyday...overall it was a great show and the food at the end of the show was good too....it was catered by "Saffron Patch "..... The arrangements for the food were very well done..it was very organised and there was no usual rush for the food as there were three station serving food....it was very well planned....well done...Madhu, rajesh, Hari and the other ISA committee members.....