“Evening in India” celebrated at South Fayette High School
Meghan Banerjee (right), organizer of the event, also choreographed a Bollywood-style dance with her classmates.
Sruthi Muluk and Sanjana Adurty performed a more traditional dance
Krishna Karuppiah serves up chicken tikka masala, along with samosas and rice with yogurt sauce.
Francis Cleetus holds one of his two published comic collections.
Maneesha Cleetus stands in front of her collection of Bollywood movies.
Artist Mayuri Kakkad finishes a henna painting on language teacher Cindy Nix. Henna painting is a fragrant mix of henna leaves, eucalytpus oil and clove oil that dries after 40 minutes, which then requires one to scrape it off instead of cleaning it.
2013 alumnus Christy Abraham shows off her henna painting.
Khalid Kamal and his son Aarid (back) throw a ball to a new friend.
Usually there’s only one pitcher in cricket – these kids had a different idea to play.
As the Diwali celebration of lights started in India, so did the “Evening in India” inside the South Fayette High School gymnasium, where student organizers danced, sang and sampled food along with about 100 others on Oct. 23.
Proposed by Meghan Banerjee, a junior at South Fayette, the event celebrated the growing Indian population in the district. Banerjee choreographed a Bollywood-style line dance with several of her classmates to close out the evening before students sang traditional prayer songs to the remover of obstacles, Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, and played intricate drumming patterns on tablas.
“I wanted everyone to learn something new, to bring the community together and acknowledge the growing Indian population here,” Banerjee said.
“I’m very proud of the fact that this entire event was student organized. Meghan went to student government and they just rolled with it,” said assistant principal Aaron Skrbin.
Some of the event contributors were husband and wife Francis and Maneesha Cleetus, who brought illustrations and their personal collection of Bollywood movies.
“This collection, ‘Wish Your Mouth Had a Backspace Key,’ was published here in America,” Francis said as he pointed to a book of comic strips depicting the foibles of interactions in customer service call centers.
Maneesha, a collector of Bollywood films, said the Indian-produced films are often looked upon as genre films because of their near-universal themes.
“It’s the melodrama. Every 10 minutes you’re be blubbering like an idiot crying because of the appeal to emotions. And that’s a reflection of culture, that it’s OK to cry in public. Family ties are very strong in India,” Maneesh said.
“But Bollywood has evolved. You have all sorts of movies now, action, docudramas in addition to romance and the soap opera style dramas. But in the ’70s, it was almost a consistent formula you’d see in every movie, the ‘lost and found’ trope, where you would have a family go somewhere and they would get separated by a dramatic event and then come back together.”