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More than 300 people celebrated Diwali and Navratri organized by IANH  at the Merrimack High School on Saturday, November 13, 2004. People came from all over the state, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. A group of students from Shortridge Academy in Milton and some members of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Manchester also attended the Festival.

NH Senator from Nashua Joe Foster was the chief guest at the Festival. Senator and his family seemed to enjoy the festivities very much and even stayed on to take part in the Dandiya. Also on this occasion, IANH honored Mini Timmaraju, Executive Director of NH Senate Democratic Caucus for her contribution to furthering the political awareness and participation in the Indian American community in New Hampshire.

IANH Cultural Committee brought together an array of talents from the Indian American community, which kept the audience spell-bound for a period of two hours. The entertainment included folk dances, dances on popular numbers from Indian movies, movie songs, classical singing and poetry in Hindi. Highlights of the evening included Manipuri dances performed by the founder of Aangikam Academy, Jasmine Shah and a Taraana (song) performed by Sandhya Sridhar and her students.

People enjoyed the food catered by Gurnam Catering Service and the Dandiya conducted by Ravi Singh. During the dinner, Chitra Dixit sang beautiful melodies from Hindi movies. She rendered the male as well as the female voices in the duets and did it very well.

The festival included stalls by people selling clothing, jewelry, art, and appliances. Some stalls were taken by non-profit organizations to spread their messages. Many people had their hands painted with henna at one of the stalls.

The joy and excitement of the festival continued for six hours until 11 o’clock in the night. Many people echoed the words of IANH member Sarwan Aggarwal, “the festival was a wonderful experience”.