Students celebrate Diwali

Seven young girls sat dressed in colorful Indian sarees, waiting anxiously for their moment to shine at the Mathers Museum on Thursday night. Their bright dresses sparkled and jingled as they squirmed with anticipation, waiting to perform for Diwali, the Indian Festival of Light.

“These girls are doing a dance that was created thousands of years ago in a small village across the world,” said sophomore Preya Davé.

Since September, Davé has helped teach the girls the dance of Garba, a traditional Indian dance performed to celebrate Navratri, a holiday devoted to female divinity.

Diwali is a major festival in Hinduism that represents good conquering evil. 

“It’s a festival of lights. Everywhere, you will find most of the houses decorated with lights,” said Bloomington resident Soumya Kashi, who attended the performance at the museum.

Afterward, she traveled a few blocks to the Asian Culture Center’s celebration, where there were arts, crafts, songs and large amounts of warm Indian food.

“The crowd that came was very diverse from alternate backgrounds,” said ACC staff member and senior Elise Magno.

Children created their own rangoli, a decorative design typical of India, at the arts and crafts table. Eight-year-old Shay Upadhyay sat sprinkling her rangoli with glitter. Upadhyay was one of the Garba dancers at the Mathers Museum and said shyly that she was enjoying herself. 

Guests sat on the ACC lawn with plates of food from Samira’s and Bombay House. Davé and junior Ronak Parikh, the two captains of the IU Raas Team, demonstrated the traditional Indian dance of Raas, in which partners dance with wooden sticks. After the demonstration, guests lined up and learned the dance themselves. 

As the sun went down, dozens of candles were lit to line the sidewalk leading to the steps of the ACC in honor of the Festival of Light tradition.

Mai-Lin Poon, a graduate assistant for the ACC, said the event went well.

“People really seemed to like the demonstration,” Poon said, “and they loved the food.”