Cross Cultural Amalgamation

Amalgamantion, I swear by Oxford's, is the best term to be used here to put much needed stress on this post.

Cross Cultural Amalgamation – The combination of two or more cultures.

Dandiya pretty synonymous with Gujrati Community has more and more patrons joining in the bandwagon every year. Navratri Utsavs, pretty famous all over India, are well known for the celebrations and the eagerness with which people from different walks of life come together and place themselves on a single platform,a platform of Universal Brotherhood.

A couple of decades ago, Navratri Utsavs seemed to be limited for Gujrati Folks only, but as time changes and it is a well known fact that Time Takes It Own Toll, Navratri Celebrations have off late started being more of an event for cross cultural celebrations.

Name any particular religion and you will find them there, dancing on the Dandiya beats, Religions holds no importance on the floor. Who made the religions, the man. God has always accepted everyone open heartedly and the same is pretty evident at these Navratri Utsavs. Ask any one who has been to Navratri Utsavs, they would swear by it that there were no issues pertaining to any sort, between them. Its all about being together.

This year, ushered in one of my colleagues from Sri Lanka, right on time for Dandiya. Excitement seemed to be on the peak of it. We all were elevated and were high about him, joining us for the event. Generally speaking, we've been to Dandiya with lots of people before including expats from UK, US and Australia. But this time, it was a lot different, it was someone from pretty close by. A person, who knows about India and has seen these celebrations in a lot of Bollywood Movies.

No pun intended, but he proved to be worth the mettle. It sort of takes a person a lot of guts to start off dancing admist huge crowd, which could give a well developed city a run for money.

Lemme introduce him, he is Lakpriya and we call him Lak. So, Lak was on the floor with us and it took barely a few minutes to get him into the groove and he was all by himself, dancing the night away. Dandiya continued for some time and then started the typical bollywood style of dancing clubbed with a few of Garba steps and Dandiya steps... the one we generally do at the end of the whole event, where we all break loose and go casual with the dance.

It was fun and frolic all the way.

All stressed out and drenched, we all sat down for a quick chat, which continued on for long and long.

Lak, tasted Kaalakhatta Ice Gola, pretty famous out here. Hope he liked it. Just lick it real slow, is all I can say about it.

More updates coming soon.