On Saturday, April 25, the Mosaic of South Asian Interests at Carleton (MOSAIC) hosted its second annual South Asian New Year celebration in the Great Hall. 

The celebration honored multiple South Asian New Year holidays occurring in mid-April. “We started it last year, when we were celebrating Bengali New Year and one of our board members last year — Narjis Nusaibah ’26 — had the idea to do this event to make MOSAIC more representative of South Asia as a whole,” said Abhimanyu Rao ’28, a member of the MOSAIC board. 

The South Asian New Year celebration represents MOSAIC’s efforts to make its organization more inclusive. “The majority of our members are Indian, and so a lot of our events have been catering to the Indian population, and we’re trying to expand that to show all the different parts of South Asia and how diverse we are as one organization,” said Rao. “And so South Asian New Year was symbolizing all of that because we have Bengali New Year happening, we have Marathi New Year happening […] we have a couple of New Years that are happening in the south of India, in the northeast of India and in Sri Lanka.”

During the event, multiple members of MOSAIC spoke on how they celebrate their cultures’ New Year holidays at home. Adit Garg ’27 did a vocal performance of “Chaudhvin Ka Chand.” “It’s like an old-timey 1980s, 1990s song,” said Anoushka Jha ’29, who also spoke at the celebration. “So, if you know it, it’s a very sweet song.”

The MOSAIC board encountered logistical challenges while planning the event, largely due to the limited number of available venues. “We knew that we usually attract a fairly large audience, and we need a space that can accommodate them, and that ends up being either the Great Hall, which is where we did the event, or the Weitz Commons,” said Rao. “So we were looking for times when it was free and when we’d be able to have the most people […] and it was kind of unfortunate because we realized we would be doing our event at the same time as LASO [Quinceñera], and we had a lot of people who wanted to attend both events.”

The board also initially struggled with obtaining sufficient funding for the event. “We had to go to the [Carleton Student Alliance] Budget Committee and have a bit of back and forth about the importance and general appeal of this event, but we were able to come to an agreement with them,” added Rao.

Overall, the MOSAIC board overwhelmingly felt that the celebration’s success made the planning well worth it. In addition to educating non-South Asian members of Carleton’s student body on the diversity of South Asian traditions, many members of MOSAIC felt that they were able to learn more as well. “My family at home is Punjabi, but we don’t really celebrate Vaisakhi [Punjabi spring harvest celebration] that much,” said Zain Bhalla ’29, a member of MOSAIC. “And because of this event, I was able to learn about why our family doesn’t celebrate it and what it means to the Punjabi community.”

The South Asian New Year celebration highlighted MOSAIC’s overall goal of building a strong South Asian community at Carleton. “When I first came into this campus, I kind of felt like an outsider, even within the South Asian community,” said Leeana Farid ’29, who gave a speech at the celebration. “In America, the general perception of South Asia is just either India or Pakistan. But as I attended more MOSAIC events, I saw a lot of other regions being incorporated, such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, etc.”

For many, the celebration brought a small taste of home. “Bengali New Year is something that I celebrate with my family every single year,” said Farid. “This is the first time I’m doing it without my family […] it was really nice that I got a space to speak about it and just eat food with my friends and bring friends who are from other cultures into the space as well.”