IndoPak hosted its annual Bollywood Night on Oct. 15, 2021 from 6 PM to 9 PM in the Irvington courtyard. With over 150 attendees, a significant increase compared to previous years, Bollywood Night was the first major event held by IndoPak this year. Attendees enjoyed dancing, eating samosas, and watching IndoPak’s dance teams perform.

In previous years, this event was held in the small gym, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, IndoPak hosted it in the courtyard to ensure the safety of all attendees. The food table was set up on the other side of the stage to make sure that there was enough space between attendees who wanted to take their masks off to eat.

“Since we did set up the event in the courtyard, there were a lot of restrictions,” said IndoPak Vice President Sanjana Nagwekar (12). “Decorations and the extension cords for the music had to be set up appropriately so no one would trip over them and it was difficult for us to project the music across the entire courtyard.”
Srujana Kuppala (12) attended Bollywood Night prior to COVID-19 and noted that although she preferred the event to be indoors, she still had an enjoyable experience.

“The mosh pits were a lot of fun,” stated Kuppala. “Everyone was jumping around and singing the lyrics to all the songs and it was great to see the cultural unity at Irvington.”

The most difficult part of organizing the event according to Suhani Singh (12), co-president of IndoPak, was filling out the ASG forms in time as IndoPak advisor Alberto Ballado was absent.

“We were on a major time constraint,” said Singh. “Our advisor was gone so we had to figure out a date for the event and submit the necessary forms to ASG the day they were due.”

Additionally, since the event was hosted at 6 PM on a school day, IndoPak officers had only a few hours after school to get ready and set up the courtyard for the event. However, due to extensive pre-planning, they were able to start the event on time.

“We planned a lot of the logistics in advance,” said Nagwekar. “We gathered the decorations necessary well in advance, created a playlist of songs, and organized the food that we were going to serve.”

Tasks were delegated to all the officers to ensure that the event ran smoothly. Public Relations officer Anika Kanhere (11) ordered the food, which included pizza and samosas, along with Sprite and Coke, beforehand and created the playlist of songs for the event. IndoPak’s all-purpose intern, Misha Meswani (10), was responsible for serving the food at the event. Remaining officers set up the speaker and decorations, processed payments and allowed attendees to enter, and served as DJs.

Despite COVID-19 restrictions fundamentally changing how Bollywood Night was set up, the IndoPak officer team made the experience just as fun and safe for all attendees. An especially exciting part was the dance performances from IndoPak’s dance teams including Soor, Sitaree, Natya, and IBC were a hit and attendees were in awe of the dancers.

With well-executed logistics, attendees including Aryan Dua (12) found the event memorable.

“My favorite parts of the event were dancing in the middle of the circle with my friends and watching the IndoPak dance teams perform,” expressed Dua. “ The event was great and by far my favorite senior event so far.”