The South Asian Student Association (SASA) hosted a Diwali potluck on Friday, Nov. 16 in the MLK room, bringing together students from across the Boston area to celebrate the holiday. In collaboration with several other high schools, the event featured tasty dishes and sweets like pulao, jalebis and samosas, alongside cultural activities such as mehndi—natural temporary tattoos—and rangoli—a traditional art using colorful powder.
Senior and SASA co-president Amarjot Ranu said the goal of the event was to celebrate the festival of lights together, and she hopes to expand the event to include more high schools in the future.
“I wanted, first and foremost, for people to make friends. I think a lot of us have friends outside of school, so I wanted us to be connecting with different people,” Ranu said. “Especially for the underclassmen, having a South Asian community is super important as you go into high school and are trying to find your place. Having a strong identity and having a strong sense of self stems from having a strong community.”
Senior and SASA member Calla Paragiri said the event offered a chance to extend celebrations beyond the high school and interact with the broader South Asian community.
“Coming from someone who is part of another affinity club as well, we shouldn’t just keep our community here but also spread it out,” Paragiri said. “We’re all part of the same community and the same heritage, so we can really bring that all together and make something bigger, in Boston, Brookline and just in general. Having these connections with other people can take us a long way.”
Anjali Patel, a junior at the Boston Latin School (BLS) and president of the school’s South Asian student-led organization, BLS Desi Society, attended the event and said it allowed her to build connections with others and meet people outside her usual circle.
“I made two new friends, and meeting new people gives me the opportunity to form new connections with people I can reach out to for future events that we’ll have,” Patel said.
Paragiri ran the mehndi station and said the event provided her with an outlet to explore her passion for the art form and deepened her connection to her heritage.
“I always feel like these types of events make me feel more connected to my culture, and that I can, over time, build a stronger bond with it and strengthen that link,” Paragiri said.
Patel said that festivals are a time to focus on the community’s unity and bond over shared heritage.
“We’re all here in America, and although we all have different immigration stories, we still share a lot of similar parts of our culture. It’s important that we connect over that, because there’s not that many of us, at least in my school,” Patel said. “It’s important to reach out and find your community and find people with similar struggles and culture.”
