Heritage Night

In Nikhil's school every year, there is a multi-cultural evening called Heritage Night. Since we have been with the school for 4 years now, we knew what to expect. There is a big crowd of Indians who dress up in Indian clothing. But it was more colorful that what I had expected.

For the past one month, volunteers from our development had coached the kids to do a traditional Gujarati dance. That was one more thing to look forward to. It is always exciting for every mom/dad to watch their kid perform and there were many many parents who went through similar feelings that night.

I had volunteered to help man the India booth. There were so many yummy things people cooked and brought for sampling. People walked around from booth to booth sampling foods of different countries. India booth had delicious sevai upma, besan halwa, fryums, banana chips and gulab jamun which we all digged in along with serving the visitors politely :-)

"Do you want your name written in Hindi in a bookmark?"

Right at the booth, I landed the job of writing the names of visitors (mostly only kid visitors) in Hindi, the National language of India in bookmarks. I enjoyed this task since it put my Hindi writing skills to test. Of course, writing Indian names was easy - but I did have a real challenge with writing American names in Hindi. I managed to survive with Andrew and Zoe! But almost every kid and parents were excited when I wrote the kid's name in Hindi and handed over the bookmark to them. Some even got it written for other kids at home!

My initial reaction before going to the event was "Been there, done that!" But over there I met many folks who are attending this for the first time and seeing them I remembered my excitement of the facing the unknown years back- "when is the fashion parade", "what time is our kids dance"! I realized that the Heritage Night this time takes a new meaning for them. It is these newcomers who keep the spirit going every year!