Live Bollywood Dandiya night by Poonam Bhatia Rocks Chicago

Chicago IL: The whirling dancers, clapping hands, distinct sound of wooden sticks struck together, toe tapping music and people wearing colorful clothes marked the Navratrey celebration at the Garba & Dandiya Raas dances held all over Chicago land. Over 1200 people of different age groups joined and celebrated the Grand Live Bollywood Dandiya Night by Poonam Bhatia & Hitesh Master at Bolingbrook High School on October 6, 2018

A night of fun and revelry to bring in the Hindu festive season Navratri and eventually Diwali, was put together by Ganesh Subramanian of Chicago Wedding and Fashion Photography. People of all communities, dressed in their festive attires, started reaching Bolingbrook venue by 7 pm. This reporter reached the Venue much before the actual show started.

Orchestra SaReGaMa with Hitesh Master and his maverick musicians had set up their band before the gate of the hall was opened. The sound was being set up by Kafi khan who himself is an accomplished Rhythmist. The live band had Richard Cristian in octopad and sampler, Chetan Soni on Roto drums and Gopal shah on Acoustic drum set.

Poonam Bhatia, Bollywood Playback singer who has given playback in more than ten regional languages in India and does a lot of charity work all over the USA, arrived there by 6.30pm to do her sound check with the band. Once the sound check was done, the gates of the hall were opened to the public. Suddenly about a thousand revelers thronged the place and signed up for the raffle by eVasthra & Uptick Financials! Some of them went straight to the stalls which were set up to sell small knickknacks. And some went directly to have a bite from the food counters that were set up specially that day for them by Tandoor Hut.

Once the music started playing, everybody came to the center of the hall and started dancing to the beats of orchestra SaReGaMa. Hitesh master apart from conducting his musicians, also did magic with his fingers on the keyboards!! Poonam Bhatia, along with co singers Taarika Bhatia and Darshana Patel, as usual did the magic with her voice!! Hitesh Master also crooned in the mic! Taarika Bhatia is the lead singer with Bollywood singer Mika Singh’s band. Since it was a Bollywood Dandiya evening, a lot of Bollywood songs were also included along with the traditional Gujarati numbers. The hall kept reverberating with the beats of dandiya till about 10.15pm, which was the time deadline for the venue. Thereafter people had to stop dancing, though they did not want to!! The fun had just begun.

The event promoter Ganesh Subramanian thanked everyone for making it a grand success and announced the winners of the raffle and promised to give them many more such fun filled evenings!!

The event was produced by Ganesh Subramanian & Menaga Rajukannan of Chicago Wedding & Fashion Photography (www.chicagowfp.com) & eVasthra (Indian Designer Online store based out of Chicago – www.evasthra.com) in collaboration with Tandoor Hut of Naperville & Uptick financial solutions – Remy Mel and sponsored by Professional Mortgage Solution – Ashok Lakshman, Mygo consulting, Bartosz Balaz of Allstate agency & ComForcare, Lotus Montessori of Naperville and many others.

Thanks to all volunteers including Sandhya Subbu, Karthik Giri, Param Yarasani, Chakri Gandham, Anuthama Raghu and many others who helped in bringing the live event to Chicago audience.

Audiences

Poonam Bhatia, Bollywood Playback singer