Bala Joshi and the StayFit group organized a community fund raiser for the ICC on the evening of December 13th. This is a short write up on the event from the viewpoint of a "community member".

The kids had been down with coughs and colds, it had been a tiring  day with guests, chores and other things, and we debated, in time honored fashion: "go or not go?".

Eventually we decided to leave the kids at home and "go". I am glad we went.

We reached there a few minutes before the appointed time of 7.00pm,  parked, and walked in -- to find a buzzing crowd in the lobby: people discovering friends, chatting, laughing, sipping wine and chomping on appetizers. It was a distinctly different look and feel from the annual ICC banquet: less dressy, more genial, lower stress. More like a large, informal event at somebody's (very large and nice) house. We registered, bought our drink coupons and found a few people to chat with before we realized that the program inside the Malavalli auditorium had begun.

We walked in to find two things: (i) there were no empty tables, and (ii) an eight year old was holding the spotlight on the stage: he was playing the keyboard. I don't recall what he was playing, but he got a thunderous applause when he finished and exited with his keyboard.We took advantage of the applause to squeeze a couple of chairs onto a table that had some friends sitting there and settled down to enjoy the evening.

There's a different dynamic to audience reactions when family and friends are performing. Its not surprising; people are much less picky (if at all) -- they cheer and holler and hoot and encourage even  the most nervous proteges. And tonight, all of the performers were in-house: friends and families rousted up by Bala and friends! People in the audience spent as much energy cheering them on as the performers (probably) spent in performing.

The next few segments  were dance numbers. None of these were pros (with apologies to Bala, whose daughter was the centrepiece of a great dance number) -- but the noise levels from the "peanut" gallery section that was hooting, whistling, clapping and cheering was an order of magnitude larger than anything I've seen indoors recently. It got everybody in the audience jazzed up; as  the performers finished their pieces and walked through the hall to go and sit with their friends and families, people in their path or around their tables would lean over  and holler "Well done!"

The dances were followed by dinner -- a dinner that came as a complete surprise to me, since I was expecting a  pared down affair in the interests of conserving money. But no, it was great. The only clearly discernible difference to me was the dessert -- whilst the traditionally (higher end) banquet dessert would probably have been kulfi, we had vanilla ice cream. And yet, I doubt that a single person will hold that against the ICC. Good food is definitely trumped by good company, but there were no compromises
here. Both food and a feeling of companionship were in abundance and of a high calibre.

Dinner was followed by  a staple of all community events: speeches! Bala and Paul spoke well - both of them stressed the need for the community to band together and support the ICC. I think they hit the right notes and probably got people thinking about how they can help further. Following this
were raffles and door prizes (this began to flag a bit since they had so many prizes to give away ... and we didn't win any) followed by more performances. We left at about 9.30pm: the night was still young and I'm sure that those of you that were there can add to this very brief account.

Ideas/Things to work on (if we do more of these and I hope we will): make the evening more regionally oriented (e.g., a "North Indian" evening, or a Gujarati evening, etc) with the food, entertainment and supporting events skewed towards that goal. Use the slides/projectors to greater effect to tell the audience interesting background information about the performances/performers (e.g., Bala's daughter was roped in for Bala at the last minute; one of the dancers had lost 70 pounds in the course of less than one year in the StayFit group; one of the Bhangra dancers was a Turkish woman -- Nevran -- who participates in a lot of dance programs at the ICC. We had Jayshree -- Bala's wife -- at our table: she was a font of useful information which would be appreciated by more people than just us). Document what worked and what did not. Right now, a lot of this is all in just Bala's head, but we should be able to do events like this in other parts of the Bay area too.

In conclusion, it was one of the most heart warming events I've been to at the ICC and we should learn from it. Thanks to Bala
and all the volunteers for doing it. I learned a lot and had even more fun. Thanks all, and thanks to the ICC!