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2010 Hindu Heritage Day Youth: Paving The Hindu Future |
Amit Singh
05/27/2010
Youth: Paving the Hindu Future
A modern-day nationalist thinker of India, and a practitioner of his own thoughts and teachings, Shri Guru Golwalkar has stated, ““Our youth must be made to feel proud of being born in the great lineage of rishis (learned sages) and yogis (adepts). If we have to live up to their legacy, we must live as Hindus, we must appear as Hindus, and we must make ourselves felt by the whole world as Hindus."
Over 2500 Hindu Americans assembled at the Marlborough Middle School in Massachusetts on May 22, 2010 to celebrate the 14th Hindu Heritage Day (HHD), the event having the blessings of HH Jagadguru Sri Shankaracharya Swamigal of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham and the grace of Ishwara. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA) organized the HHD. VHPA [http://www.vhp-america.org] is a national organization aiming to unite Hindus by instilling in them devotion to the Hindu way of life, to cultivate self-respect and respect for all people, and to establish contacts with Hindus all over the world. To mark this annual occasion, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Deval L. Patrick, as well as the Mayor of the City of Marlborough, Nancy E. Stevens, proclaimed Saturday, 22 May 2010 as "Hindu Heritage Day." The Western calendar date is equivalent to Vaishakh Shukla Dashami of the Vikarami Samvat 2066 of the lunar calendar popular among Hindus. “Shukla dashami†indicates the tenth day of a waxing moon.
The theme of this year's HHD was “Youth: Paving the Hindu Future.†Hindu elders have lit that path for eons for the youth to tread on. Mrs. Rajkumari Sinha, a nonagenarian, was invited to the stage to light a lamp marking the beginning of the event. Lighting the lamp also symbolizes a movement from darkness to light.
For new attendees of the HHD, the “mela,†akin to a typical country fair, was a surprise as it was unlike any event they had experienced anywhere. They wondered how it could even begin to be managed. The mela was composed of three major programs that ran simultaneously. First, there was a cultural program that ran for slightly over three hours. Second, there were about 50 booths in the form of a bazaar that one could visit and browse. Third, there was a food court where one could find the most popular Indian delights. A nominal entrance fee of $2 per person, excluding children 5 and younger, covered admission to the entire event. The trilemma that almost all attendees faced was how to attend and benefit from all the programs in the available time without missing anything. The frequently unnoticed fourth event that occurred simultaneously for almost all of the people was meeting friends, some they had lost touch with. It became a juggling act on the part of each family to enjoy the four events. At the end of the evening, almost everyone wished that they had come earlier or had more time to do everything.
The cultural program ran like clockwork. There were 200-plus participants in all. It allowed children of all ages to perform on stage. It was geared to be an open house program where the audience was free to go in and out of the auditorium as long as it was done discreetly without disrupting the performers or the attendees. The program brought together the work of the best music and dance teachers of the Boston area. Overall, more than 30 performances were presented by those teachers. These included skits, classical and folk songs, and various forms of classical dances including folk, bhangra, bharatnatyam, odissi, kuchipudi, and kathak. Even though the atmosphere of the auditorium was relaxed so that the very young children of 2-3 years of age could start dancing or moving in the aisles to the rhythm of the music, there was nothing relaxed about the quality of the program. Each item was professionally done complete with matching costumes under the expert guidance of the teachers. It was with pride that the teachers presented their student performances and it was with wonder that the audience watched these presentations by the talented youth. As one expert dance teacher commented, the caliber of the students had been steadily rising to the point where it compared favorably with the best trained in the arts in India (Bharat).
The cultural program also covered an enactment of the famous passage from the Mahabharata epic where the archer par excellence, Arjuna, is virtually blind to any distraction save the eye of a fish he was expected to pierce with his arrow.
At this point in the span of the 14-year history of the HHD, the demand for a slot in the program far outstrips the availability. The logistics of getting all of the participants ready in the green room, ensuring that the right computer disc is played for a respective performance, and getting the sound system and stage lighting to run smoothly is a command performance in itself perfected by a number of volunteers over the last fourteen years. An internship in management may be available in the future for students interested in learning the skills necessary for managing a show.
While the cultural program ran in the auditorium, there was a virtual bazaar established in the corridors. Two categories of booths or stalls were there. One was for profit and sold merchandise from India not easily available in stores in the Boston area. This category included garments, jewelry, books, and various decorative items. The second category of booths was of not-for-profit organizations offering information useful to the community at large. Contact information was available for various schools of yoga and meditation, VHPA camps, instruction in learning Sanskrit and Hindi, “Indian Circle for Caring,†area temples, Math and Science teachers, “Ekal Vidyalaya,†“Support-a-Child,†professional photographers, and financial services, to list a few. There were two invaluable, easy to understand informational displays: Contributions of Bharat Exhibition and Bhakti Exhibition. There was yet another category of booths which provided hands-on activities for children interested in face painting, drawing, kite flying, and menhadi. The kite flying activity attracted the young and not-so-young throughout the day in sizeable numbers. The menhadi (Henna) stall was very popular with young ladies regardless of their level of familiarity with the natural cosmetic of Bharat. There was a very well attended stall of fruit drinks and masala chai popular with persons accustomed to taking afternoon tea. It took considerable time to navigate these booths as one ran across friends and time had to be taken to chat with several families. Without the HHD, many such friends are like “ships that pass in the night†of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem.
Besides the booths, the cafeteria was a common area where one was certain to run into friends. It was jam packed the whole time. A prominent Indian restaurant, Minerva Indian Cuisine (Natick and Norwood, MA), served the food. The fragrance of freshly prepared food wafted through the air as the kitchen staff worked non-stop to keep up with the demand for various items. One was reminded of weddings in India where such activity to feed a virtually unlimited number of guests is commonplace. There was a raffle that attracted hundreds of entrants that listened patiently to see if they won an iPod.
Behind the scenes, there were over 100 volunteers that worked, some of them over several months, to make the HHD mela possible and successful. Many of such volunteers have been working for organizing the HHD since its beginning in the Boston area. If you are interested in participating in any segment of the HHD next year, you are welcome to contact Mrs. Jaya Asthana at jasthana@hotmail.com.
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