SOUTH BRUNSWICK — The Indo-American Cultural Foundation of Central Jersey will host its Grand Navratri Garba celebration in South Brunswick starting next week.
The event, which takes place during three weekends, from 8 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., begins on Sept. 26-27, and will continue Oct. 3-4, and 10-11, according to the organization.
The first four days of Garba will be at the South Brunswick High School, 750 Ridge Road in Monmouth Junction and the last days will be at the Crossroads South Middle School, 195 Major Road in Monmouth Junction.
The Navratri celebration marks the festival of nine nights during which Hindus worship Goddess of Shakti Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, according to the group.
Hindus believe Goddess Durga destroys all the evil propensities lurking the minds of her devotees, Goddess Lakshmi implants divine qualities in the devotee’s minds and Goddess Saraswati bestows true knowledge to her devotees. The 10th day also known as Vijay Dashami, commemorates the victory of good over evil, according to the organization.
According to a press release, the IACFNJ will hold this year’s Garba in a state of the art gymnasium at the high school and middle school, which are highly secured environments and culturally diverse neighborhoods, according to the release.
The celebration is located where South Asians are highly populated in the surrounding towns of North Brunswick, Franklin Park, Princeton, Princeton Junction, Monroe, East Brunswick, Robbinsville and East and West Windsor, according to the group.
More than 2,000 people are expected to attend each day to celebrate Hindu’s religious and cultural festival.
During the last four years, the IACFNJ Garba has been the biggest and most well organized indoor Navratri event in New Jersey, according to the group.
Once again, Mahesh Mehta and his talented singers from Bollywood and local singers and artists of Entertainment Unlimited will rock the stage with famous old and new live singing of garbas, dandiya tunes, famous sanedo and bhangaras for non-stop live entertainment for more than six hours on all six days.
The very young, middle age and older generation crowd will participate and demonstrate a variety of dance styles and costumes on all six days.
South Brunswick’s cultural diversity will be witnessed on the dance floor where the attendees will not be only Gujaratis but from all over India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Shri Lanka and other neighboring countries and high school kids of various ethnic and cultural back grounds which is rarely seen at any other Garba celebration in the country, according to organizers.
The Goddess Amba Maa’s divine and traditional Aarti will be performed on all six days and the Prasad will be distributed to all attendees.
The center stage will be decorated with Goddess Amba Maa’s statue in a temple setting where the atmosphere will feel like divine and traditional Navratri celebrations back home in Gujarat.
The cafeteria will have food stalls of various mouth-watering and traditional Indian delicacies and other varieties of food at reasonable prices which will additional convenience to the attendees, according to the group.
Local business entrepreneurs, community leaders, local and state public officials and a large number of Asian Indians will attend the celebration to support IACFNJ community efforts to keep Indian culture and heritage alive in this country.
The media sponsors for the event are Akilanews.com, TV Asia, Radio Dil, masalajunction.com, NRI Tribune, EBC Radio, Gujarat Darpan, Tiranga, India West, Asian Media USA, Gujarat Samachar, Radio Dil, Divya Bhaskar, Parikh Media Worldwide, Radio Zindagi, Hi India, Sentinel, South Brunswick Patch and South Brunswick Post, according to the release.
For further information about the event or to place an advertisement and sponsorship or stall booking, please contact Dr. Tushar Patel at 848-391-0499, Mac Shah at 848-667-0745 or Hitesh Patel at 732-718-5238 or visit organization website at www.IACFNJ.org or e-mail at [email protected].
