Paint the town red, blue & pink!

Celebrating one of the biggest Hindu holidays, NYU Tandon’s Graduate Indian Students’ Association (GISA) will host the 2017 Holi Party on Sunday, March 5, 2017 at the Kimmel Center. Holi, known as the spring festival of colors, is a holiday predominantly observed in India, and now popular throughout many countries and communities for its celebration of love, happiness, friends and family, and, of course, color. This year’s Holi celebration is the first Holi event hosted by GISA, whose leadership team hopes students from all of NYU join in the festivities that include music, dancing, and unlimited Indian delicacies.

Bridging the gap between the NYU schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn is one of GISA’s goals, as they envision the Holi festival and their upcoming events as creating more connections and interactions between all NYU students. “A lot of people don’t know about the Brooklyn - NYU connection, so we want to expand knowledge of Tandon,” Dhruv Chhabra, who is vice president of GISA and a graduate student in electrical engineering, said. With their Diwali festival attracting over 300 guests last fall, Chhabra and the GISA team hope many more students will attend their Holi celebration at the Washington Square campus, and maybe even make the trek out to Brooklyn in the near future.

Chhabra noted how GISA frequently collaborates with other students groups and schools, like the South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA) at NYU Law and the NYU School for Professional Studies, for social and cultural events. Their new leadership team, which includes Chhabra, president Nilesh Samanta ’17, treasurer Viranch Shah ’17, marketing head Supraja Sundaresan ’18, and operations co-heads Devansh Bisla ’18 and Garima Negi ’18, wants to encourage students all across NYU, both graduate and undergraduate, to learn more about GISA.

As one of the largest student groups at NYU Tandon, GISA aims to provide students with a much-needed escape from their studies and offers Indian students a welcoming environment when they start at NYU Tandon through programs like the GISA-NYU Survival Guide and cultural events like Diwali and Holi. “People are looking for events like this, but we haven’t had the word out on the main campus,” Chhabra said. “We want people from every diverse culture to experience our group. I hope people from other schools and diverse groups attend our events, so that people know we’re a fun club and that they are more likely to come to Brooklyn.”

Camila Ryder
Graduate School of Arts and Science
Master of Arts in English Literature, Class of 2018