Close to 400 guests attended a Diwali celebration hosted by The Indian American Association of Northeast Pennsylvania on Friday at the Woodlands. Among the guests who brightened the evening with their festive outfits are, from left: Priti Patel; Heena Pursnani; Neela Patel; Varsha Shitut, association treasurer; Ambreen Choudhry; Sonya Aulakh; Shallu Garg; Shanta Syal; Ira Vohra, wife of Dr. Pranav Vohra, association president. Children in the front row are Kavya Patel, Isla Aulakh and Aria Choudhry.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Close to 400 guests attend gala
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Young dancers who study the art of Indian Classical Dance with Sujata Nair-Mulloth strike a pose at the end of their performance.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Because Diwali is a celebration of good overcoming evil and light overcoming darkness, guests contributed homemade lanterns to decorate the ballroom at the Woodlands for the recent gala sponsored by the Indian American Association of Northeast Pennsylvania.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
After they performed a dance in celebration of Diwali, these young dancers, students of Sujata Nair-Mulloth, danced to a Christmas tune.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
“Happy Diwali!” Ira Vohra of Shavertown said, greeting guests as they arrived at the Woodlands on Friday evening.
“This is the biggest Indian festival,” she told anyone who might need an introduction. “The Festival of Lights, the triumph of good over evil.”
For most of the approximately 400 guests at the gala, which was sponsored by the Indian American Association of Northeast Pennsylvania (IAANEPA), no introduction was needed — they’d been observing the 5-day festival every year since childhood.
And some of the guests were children — including youngsters who helped make handmade lanterns to decorate the banquet hall and who entertained the crowd with their dancing.
The dance performances got under way with students of Sujata Nair-Mulloth, dressed in bright red and blue outfits, first to take the floor.
They opened with a Bhajan, or Hindu devotional hymn, which Nair-Mulloth explained later via email: “This extols the virtues of meditation and looking within. It is believed that this alone allows us to see the Divine in his/her many forms.”
Their second dance showed a bit of multiculturalism, as it accompanied a recording of the calypso-style Christmas song “Mary’s Boy Child.”
That seemed to fit in with a description several Diwali revelers customarily give to people who grew up in different cultures: Diwali is as big a holiday in India as Christmas is in the United States.
IAANEPA treasurer Varsha Shitut is among those who compare Diwali celebrations to Christmas celebrations, and she pointed out Diwali also encompasses the beginning of the Hindu New Year.
“We have all kinds of sweets, all kinds of snacks,” Shitut said. “We light up our houses with strands of lights, just as you would for Christmas. In India they also have fireworks. People often buy new clothes, and they give gifts, just as we do at Christmas.”
As one of the organizers of the gala, Shitut was pleased to see so many people having a good time. “It broke up around 11:30,” she said. “Nobody wanted to leave.”