DIWALI- the festival of lights

On the 24th October 2008, the International Relations Committee (IRC) of the School of Computing (SoC) organized its first event, the SoC Diwali Night. This event was jointly organized by the Graduate Student Council of SoC. Well before the actual event, the IRC decorated the second level of the COM1 building as part of celebrating one of the most important festivals of the Indian community.
We were very honoured to have one of our lecturers, Dr Colin Tan, as our Guest-of-Honour for the night, who kick-started the event with a speech to the students. The emcees, Swathi Sundar and Chua Lu Sian, then briefly introduced the programme for the night, which included vocal, dance and instrumental performances. Before proceeding to those entertaining performances, students from the Indian Instrumental Ensemble presented the Tamil prayer song, Ennai Nee Maravadhey.
To give the non-Indian audience an idea of what Diwali is, one of our students, Kadambari, presented a speech about the general facts of Diwali. In addition, the emcees introduced some facts about India to the audience, while the next performer prepared for an Indian instrumental performance.
Subsequently, the night was filled with melodious music and gracious dance moves. Performers went on stage, one after another, to play instruments such as the Mridangam (a percussion instrument from South India) and the Veena (a plucked stringed instrument from South India), and singing songs in various languages including Malayalam, Telugu and Sanskrit. One performer, Sneha Tilak, performed Kathak, a traditional Indian Dance.
Before concluding the event, another presentation was screened which showed more about Diwali, with emphasis on the lighting of crackers and sparklers during Diwali in India. This was to allow the non-Indian audience to have a feel of the atmosphere of the real celebration in India, as we are not allowed to light any crackers or sparklers in campus!
Besides providing the audience with fun-filled entertainment, a Henna booth was set up for the audience to have their hands decorated with Mehendi for free. The IRC also prepared some Indian delicacies for the audience to try out, making the celebration complete.
Although this was the first event organized by the IRC, it was a highly successful one. We look forward to more festive events organized by the IRC in the future.

Text by Goh Khoon Hiang