Over 10,000 Attend Tampa India Festival

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By: EWT Correspondent

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Over 10,000 people from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, California, and New York attended the Oct. 30th 2010, 23rd annual India Festival. Gujarati Samaj of Tampa Bay first organized this event in 1987 and it has been held every year since then. Part of the Fair was the ever popular dance competition; more than 600 dancers and singers dressed in colorful regional Indian attire took part in four categories– garba, raas, folk and bhangra.
About 80 vendor booths offered clothing, jewelry, film DVDs and CDs, arts and crafts, photo studio, home décor, etc. There also were numerous food stalls selling items such as samosas, bhel puri, chicken curry, dosas as well as exotic fruit juices and ice creams. The
event was held at University of South Florida’s Sun Dome, a spacious venue which allowed plenty of space of shopping, mingling and a beautiful auditorium. Several closed-circuit TV monitors were set up so people could shop and eat while watching the dances.
This large scale festival was made possible by the active participation of community and volunteers. More than 100 volunteers works for months to make this festival successful. “We were very pleased with the turnout for the daylong event,” said India Festival Chairman Kanti Bakarania. He added that there was a “good representation from our local city and county officials.” Among the attendees were U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, Pasco County Clerk and Comptroller Paula S. O’ Neil, Hillsborough County commissioners Ken Hagen and Rose Ferlita, former Florida State Senator and newly elected Hillsborough County Commissioner Lesley Miller Jr. and Tampa City Council Chairperson Gwendolyn Miller.
Indian-American communities from Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, West Palm Beach, Melbourne, Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, Gainesville and Ocala among others participated in the competition. Several students from UCF participated in the Garba competition, the group called Garba Knights named after the college mascot, won first place; one of the dancers, Nisha said “We have been practicing since summer and love to dance for fun and also enjoy the competition, it keeps us motivated”. There were plenty of little girls in the dance competition, they looked like were having a lot of fun. [/mwrap]

Posted by admin on Dec 1st, 2010 and is filed under Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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