SASH celebrates memories at show

The South Asian Students of Hopkins (SASH) celebrated the theme "Yaadein," or memories, during their Spring Culture Show on Saturday.

"It's the culmination of the year," said Ami Bhatt, current president of SASH. "We have so many seniors who are graduating who have been actively involved in SASH from day one ... so it's memories both for them, in terms of their entire time here, and for this present board."

The event honored the graduating seniors of SASH and raised money for Sakhi, a non-profit organization committed to ending violence against women of South Asian origin. The evening included a buffet dinner, catered by Akbar Restaurant, skits by the SASH board members, vocal and dance performances and a slide show.

Bhatt spoke about the importance of the work Sakhi does in promoting the rights of South Asian women. Her opening remarks was followed by a skit performed by the board members, who parodied the MTV reality show Real World. Abishek Chitlangia, a first-year graduate student, performed Yarron Dosti.

"It is a tribute to friendship and to sweethearts too," he said. The three members of the Sofa Kings danced to a medley of R&B songs, followed by Svetlana Minina and Victor Yang in an unconventional salsa number to Seduction and Defeat. The second part of the Real World skit was performed, after which Jinesh Shah and Paulomi Metha gave an a capella rendition of "Ek Din" from the Hindi movie Yes Boss.

JHU JOSH performed a dance number entitled Beats of Passion. The dance team began last spring semester, and after the group's three founding girls graduated, additional girls joined the group to create a total of ten. JHU JOSH only recently became an SAC group.

Sadena Thevarajah, current Vice President of Social Affairs and member of JHU JOSH, said, "Josh means "energy' in Hindi. We're practicing year round to get up a set of dances so that we can hopefully run a show one day. I think [tonight's performance] went great. We performed yesterday also [at the Musical Showcase] so it was a nice setup for today, because it was definitely the most important one."

The last dance number was entitled Spirit Fingers and was the final performance for the three graduating seniors, Ami Bhatt, Sheila Kumar and Amy Shah. The event wrapped up with a slide show commemorating the events of the year for the members of SASH.

"This [culture show] was really important to me, and I'm really glad it ended on such a good note," said Bhatt. "[Being involved with this] is something that I'll definitely miss next year ... and the board that I work with was so fabulous this year, that it'll be really hard to say goodbye to them."

Akhil Seth, current vice president of finances, said, "We got a pretty good turnout. A lot of people from the South Asian community, as well as people outside the South Asian community, which is always nice."

Bhatt agreed.

"In terms of attendance, this has been the biggest one we've had so far," she said. "We've never sold out to this extent, where we arranged for food for 150 people and it's all gone. Every seat was sold out. I think that we did a really good job in raising money for both our charity and successfully pulling off this event, so I think we're really happy [with] the way it turned out."

The feel of the spring culture show is quite different from the fall show, as many SASH board members observed.

"The spring event is actually something more geared towards the seniors, because they're graduating," said Nishant Patel, vice president of social affairs for next year. "It's a wonderful event. It's very nostalgic, and it's basically for them."

Anjali Malik, representative to the Junior Class, agreed, and also spoke about the direction of SASH in the coming year.

"We're looking to expand -- we got a lot more funding from SAC -- [and] to also expand our philanthropy and community service," he said. "We always have Gandhi Day, but we want to try to ... get more of the school involved, because, right now, it's harder to get out to the greater Hopkins community.