Sanskriti

Celebrate the traditions and modernity of India this Saturday at 6 p.m. with the Indian Student Association, which will host Sanskriti—its annual Indian culture night—in the Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom.

Celebrate the traditions and modernity of India this Saturday at 6 p.m. with the Indian Student Association, which will host Sanskriti—its annual Indian culture night—in the Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom.

The theme of the event this year is “Urban India” and will include a dinner with foods from different regions of India, a show with dances, a live music performance and an informal dance with a disc jockey. The night will center around the “great blend of the old and new” found in India’s cities, said Tanya Jajodia, the president of the Indian Student Association and a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering.

The name of the event, Sanskriti, is a Hindi word meaning tradition.

Jajodia said the ISA hopes that this year’s Sanskriti will give attendees a sense of the massive changes India has undergone in the past six decades as well as the ancient culture that still plays a large part in the everyday lives of modern India.

Preetham D. Shivaram, the vice president of the ISA and a graduate student in computer science, said, “As we all know, India [has] a long history and a rich culture which we have maintained [until] now.”

Recently, the process of urbanization has begun to transform India. Although 40 million of India’s urban dwellers live in slums, urbanization has also effected a number of positive changes, according to the Population Reference Bureau.

Shivaram said, “Urbanization is changing the Indian society not only in [the] economic shift,” which has accompanied India’s huge successes in sectors like information technology, “but also in social ways.”

The massive metropolitan centers of India—like Mumbai, Kolkata (the Bengal spelling of Calcutta) and Delhi—contain great diversity, Jajodia said.

The sheer sizes of India’s mega-cities compounds the effects of diversity: approximately 16.4 million people inhabited Greater Mumbai as of the 2001 Indian Census, Kolkata housed 13.4 million and Delhi had a population of 12.9 million, according to the Population Reference Bureau.

These mega-cities, Jajodia said, “symbolize globalization in a big way…people with different faiths, beliefs and traditions, social status [are] all together, working with one another.”

In spite of these changes, Shivaram said, “We still preserve the heritage, we have our gods that we worship, traditions that we follow, festivals that we celebrate and rituals that are still being practiced.”

In short, “Urban India is something where modernity and technology meet culture and tradition,” Shivaram said.

According to Jajodia, Sanskriti will open with a dinner consisting of foods from various regions of India, including one special dish from the southern part of the country, and several from the north.

During dinner, classical and instrumental Indian music will be played.

After dinner, around 7 p.m., there will be a short presentation on India followed by both classical and contemporary dances.

“We’ve got a lot of dances,” Jajodia said.

Also as part of the show, there will be a live tabla, sitar and guitar performance.

According to Shivaram, Emidio Cantalupo, will play the sitar, an Indian string instrument not unlike a long-necked guitar. Saikiran Madhusudhan will play the tabla, an Indian hand drum, and Andrew Snyder will play the guitar.

Then a fashion show, featuring modern and traditional clothing on both male and female models will conclude the evening’s formal events.

Following the fashion show, around 10 p.m., a disc jockey will play dance songs, including some Bollywood hits.

Those interested can buy tickets at the box office in SMSU, students with I.D. pay $8, children 10 and under pay $6 and the general public pays $12.