Being miles away from India, it's surprising how much enthusiasm Desis have for Indian festivities. New Jersey is a happening place at this time of the year. Durga Puja extends over 2 weekends at various venues. It's a challenge for us to do so many performances in a short time span.I have danced to all permutations and combinations. Doing shows back to back over the weekend or shows the same day at 2 different venues. What was the challenge in store this puja season?
Last weekend we were fresh from our 2 month hiatus making an appearance in North Jersey pada of ICC. This weekend we were in Delaware, then back to Central Jersey for Dashami. We had Mitra barely catching any sleep as she was accompanying a batch of kids to the Dusherra festival in Edison and then joining us for our dance at Kallol, New Jersey's biggest puja. None of us could go through that routine, so we skipped the Dusherra celebrations. Some brave folks still managed to squeeze in dandiya nights after all this crazy schedule. I was left postponing dandiya plans for the innumerable time.
We had returned late in the night from Delaware, barely eaten the next morning before putting on make-up and driving to our final show day. It's a miracle that my kids made it to tennis or had any lunch. We were on auto-pilot mode functioning like zombies. I had drawn a chart color co-ordinated detailing all stage position since we had different set of dancers all the 3 days. The crowd support and our Edison samosas kept us functioning. There were high expectations from our team, since memories of our performances at Banga Sammelan and George Street Playhouse Aug 1st was etched in people's minds. We never dreamt this final day would be such a test of physical and mental endurance before our home crowd.
All the hard work we had put in during the summer was paying off now as all of us could dance no matter what. Sleep or food didn't matter. If there was a committment we would do it and we would win the crowd. That's the spirit of RDM professionals.
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