SASA members walked in a fashion show at the beginning of the evening. Eight countries were represented by the students: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan. Ella Banken//AS Review
By Hailey Murphy
The South Asian Student Association held their first heritage dinner in four years on Saturday Feb. 16 to share the cultures of the eight different countries they represent through music, dance, apparel and decor. The theme was “Kahaani”, meaning “story” or “journey” in Hindi.
SASA’s co-chairs, juniors Sanskruti Kuravalli and Soumya Ayelasomayajula, said this is the first SASA heritage dinner they’ve gotten to experience since coming to Western, which is why the club chose to focus on the concept of Kahaani.
“Since we haven’t done one in a long time, we wanted to focus more on just the journey of not just SASA, but all of us who are in SASA, cause we all come from completely different backgrounds and different countries and different cultures,” Ayelasomayajula said. “So we wanted to showcase that a little bit by showing our journeys and our stories through [the dinner.]”
Kuravalli said they wanted to acknowledge the cultures of all SASA members by featuring different stories from different countries throughout the heritage dinner.
The night opened with a fashion show of SASA members, where students representing each of the eight countries – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan – wore traditional clothing to represent their culture. The eight country flags were strung on either side of the stage, and the master of ceremonies gave a fact about each country as the students walked.
Kuravall and Ayelasomayajula both wore sarees to the dinner. The fashion show also featured items like kurtas and Patiala suits. Colorful cloths known as dupattas hung from the back shelves.
“We just want people to appreciate our presence on campus,” Kuravalli said. “We want them to actually understand the reasons behind particular dresses that we wear, any jewelry that we wear, so there’s no appropriation of those events. These are the times when you can actually come and actually learn and do it the proper way. We don’t someone wearing a saree as a skirt, right?”
Following the fashion show was a classical Indian dance which recounted the story of Lord Krishna, performed by University of Washington sophomore Anoushka Srinivas. Srinivas began by narrating the story of Lord Krishna in two parts, then she performed that story through movement.
There was also a national Afghani folk dance known as Attan performed by SASA members Emran Rezai, Yalda Naimzadeh, Abu Naimzadeh and Hanna Alocozy, as well as a dance performed by five members of the African Caribbean Club – Jana Obune, Shaneen Walter-Edwards, Brandi Smetko-Ortiz, Carol Githinji and Lydia Ashenafie – which featured a mixture of popular Caribbean dances.
Junior Usama Arshard, a SASA member, performed the song “Jiya” from the Bollywood film “Gunday.” The name of the song translates to “live,”he said in a Facebook message.
SASA closed these performances out with a dance drama from the four SASA board members – Reeth Pooni, Menisha Grewal, Ayelasomayajula and Kuravalli – depicting the stages in the life of a South Asian woman, from being a child, to falling in love for the first time, to getting married and having a child of one’s own.
“We all identified with that story [as women] . . . all of us have been through this journey before, so we kinda wanted to do something that made sense to us and related to us and was relatable to other people too,” Ayelasomayajula said. “But there’s definitely other aspects within the show that can be relatable to all different sorts of people.”
Another feature of the night, in addition to the food catered by Naan and Brew, was a speech from alum Simrun Chhabra.
Chhabra graduated from Western last spring and was involved with SASA all four years of college, said the master of ceremonies.
During Chhabra’s final year at Western, after being a SASA board member for two years, she served as AS President. She was the fourth woman of color to be AS President and the first Indian woman, Chhabra said in her speech.
Chhabra’s keynote focused on themes of displaced identity as an Indian woman growing up in America and the pains associated with that displacement.
She discussed her lifelong nickname, Simi, and her currently struggles in the Washington Legislature to get people to call her by her full name.
“This is your name your parents gave you. It is not difficult. It is beautiful. I will call you Simrun,” Chabbra read to the crowd, quoting her boss, who she said is also a woman of color.
Chabbra then discussed being a child, sometimes mixing her cultures with her friends, but also sometimes being embarrassed about her cultural differences, such as the food her mom packed. She discussed having to convince people she’s Indian because of her skin tone, as well as knowing how to speak the language, but never actually visiting where her mother comes from.
Chhabra connected many pieces of her life together to speak to the anger and pain in displacement. Ultimately, however, Chhabra spoke hopefully to the ability of ESC clubs to support students of color, help them embrace their culture and lead them to bright futures.
SASA’s heritage dinner also featured a silent auction, where attendees could bid on gift baskets. The proceeds of the auction went to Kinspire, a non-profit organization based in Seattle which seeks to give educational and career opportunities to orphans in India through technology.
Kuravalli said she attended Interlake High School with Kinspire’s founder, Kavya Magham, who started the organization her junior of high school.
“It’s a South Asian based-organization and they’re helping save communities that we come from, so we relate to them on that same level that they’re trying to help,” Kuravalli said. “So we thought that we would really like to have that support to them and show SASA’s support to that education as well.”
Through their team of volunteers, Kinspire holds lesson plans via Skype to help teach children English, Magham said at the dinner. They have an online learning portal to facilitate other types of lesson plans. They hold events like career galas where children get to interact with companies and recently they’ve expanded to three additional orphanages in India.
Kinspire is also teaming up with Johns Hopkins University to make a video-based curriculum for the students about personal health, according to the Kinspire website.
Magham told the crowd at the heritage dinner that she was born in India and raised in the United States from the time she was five years old. Growing up, Magham’s grandmother taught her to always help family and to consider not just blood, but community to be family as well.
This is what inspired Magham to start Kinspire, she said at the dinner. The name Kinspire means to inspire kith and kin. Magham wanted to provide educational opportunities for orphans in India as these communities often aren’t provided with the necessary resources.
SASA was first formed at Western in 1994 under the name “India Mystica,” but was changed to SASA in 2004 to include a more diverse group of countries, according to the SASA Facebook page. The club now gets together to eat, enjoy good food and share their culture, Ayelasomayajula said. Meetings this quarter are every Thursday in the ESC (VU 420).