When the University of Maryland’s South Asian a capella group, Anokha, took the floor of Stamp Student Union’s Colony Ballroom on Thursday night, a hush fell over the crowd.
Students turned their attention to the group of performers dressed in colorful clothing, some wearing kurtas, salwar kameezes and lehengas. They began to fill the room with the sounds of their voices, which wove together in harmony.
Anokha’s performance was one of many elements that paid homage to South Asian culture on Multicultural Night, an annual event hosted by this university’s South Asian Student Association that typically draws about 200 people, according to Mahee Patel, the association’s co-president.
Mahee Patel said Multicultural Night aims to spotlight the practices and traditions of all eight countries in South Asia. Many people tend to associate the region with India, the largest and most populous country, but it also includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives, she said.
“Even though there’s a lot of similarities and people like to group South Asian countries together, there is a lot of diversity within just those eight countries,” the senior criminology and criminal justice major said.
The organization has hosted their Multicultural Night every fall for the past few years, but it changed things up this year by collaborating with this university’s Nepali and Indian student associations.
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Senior information science major Arnav Patel, the South Asian Student Association’s other co-president, said the partnership aimed to branch out and incorporate more activities from different South Asian countries.
“It’s to connect people culturally on this campus and show them that there’s so much diversity here and around the globe,” he said.
Booths representing all eight South Asian countries were placed around the outskirts of Stamp’s Colony Ballroom on Thursday. Each one displayed a poster board with information about its associated country’s history, culture and geography.
Some tables served traditional cuisine, drawing long lines of students that only began to fade after the food ran out. Dishes included biryani, butter chicken, samosas, falooda and chatpate, a food often eaten in the streets of Nepal.
Chatpate is typically made with Wai Wai spice noodles, puffed rice, chaat masala seasoning and fresh vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers and onions, according to junior biology and math major Sudha Poudel, who is the president of this university’s Nepali Student Association.
Poudel usually just throws the ingredients in a bag, shakes it up and eats it, she said.
Students also sipped on chai boba provided by Boba Chai Barista throughout the night. The recently opened Indian restaurant Maryland Tandoor helped sponsor Thursday’s event, along with Indian Kitchen.
[Maryland Tandoor brings an affordable taste of Indian cuisine to College Park]
Freshman physiology and neurobiology major Vedansh Sawhney said he sampled all of the food at Multicultural Night .
“It’s such a nice melting pot of a lot of different cultures,” he said.
In between bites of food, students stopped at stations to make bracelets, receive tarot card readings and get their hands intricately decorated with henna art. They chatted with new acquaintances and challenged friends to rounds of the popular Indian boardgame carrom, which was scattered throughout the ballroom on tabletops.
A highlight of the event for many students was watching performances by Anokha and Maryland Manzar, this university’s South Asian fusion dance team.
The two groups showcased their talents and honored South Asian culture through their respective artistic mediums as they performed in the center of the ballroom.
Maryland Manzar member Christina Perumattathil said the dance team has performed at past Multicultural Nights hosted by the South Asian Student Association. This year, they danced to a soundtrack of South Indian songs.
It was the team’s first performance of the semester and many members’ first performance on the team, the junior public policy major added.
“I think they had a lot of fun,” she said. “We’ve been practicing for a while, so I hope they had fun.”
The South Asian Student Association begins preparing for Multicultural Night the summer before the event, Arnav Patel said.
“Just seeing people enjoy it is part of what makes it so rewarding,” Mahee Patel said.
Perumattathil, the Maryland Manzar dancer, said her experience at Multicultural Night helped her form stronger relationships with people she previously only knew as faces from her classes.
“I never realized how connected we really are until I came here,” she said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated that Anokha members wore saris in their a cappella performance. Some wore salwar kameezes and lehengas, not saris. A previous version of this story also misstated that chai boba was provided by Maryland Tandoor. It was provided by Boba Chai Barista. This story has been updated.
