BY KAVITA CHHIBBER

It is said you can take the Indian out of India, but you can’t take India out of the Indian. For as long as he can remember, Ranjan Duttagupta was inspired by what he saw back home-living in the culture capital Calcutta, absorbing the sounds of Rabindra sangeet and his father’s creative efforts at bringing neighbors together for a cultural show during the festive Durga puja. 

“Twenty three years ago when I came to the US, there really was nothing that I could be a part of culturally. Just the nostalgia remained and one went back home for the cultural fix,” Duttagupta recalls. 

The major turning point came at the grand Durga puja hosted by the Duttaguptas for three consecutive years. Friends chipped in to make it an authentic affair while Ranjan went to India to get all the items needed for the Puja to do it the traditional way. Each night there would be a cultural show, put up by local talent. The puja ended but the hangover remained. Ranjan began to think about the Indian youth living here. How could one keep them interested in the rich culture they are so fortunate to have inherited? And CLUB-4-ALL was created. 

Today Club-4-All, is taking steady strides towards becoming a popular annual event for the Atlanta community.

The best thing about the people behind this event is how quickly they learn from their past mistakes. Last year’s event was marred by a bad sound system and an overcrowding of people, along with lousy food. This year, even though the men and women behind the show say they were stressed out things rolled very smoothly. The Hilton took on a festive look as elegantly dressed volunteers welcomed the guests. The number of invitees was cut off to a little over 500 people as compared to the avalanche we had last time. The food was catered by one of the best restaurants in town Bhojanic, and the stage was set for what turned out to be a fun cultural evening.
Ranjan DuttaGupta, elegantly dressed in a white sherwani, welcomed the guests and acknowledged all the sponsors who had helped underwrite the event. He especially thanked his younger brother Anjan, who along with his wife Indrani have been the biggest sponsors and supporters of the event, right from the start, when it was just Ranjan’s dreamchild. 

The evening began with an invocation when key members of the event and their spouses lit the diyas on an elegantly created set. It was followed by several dances beginning with the cutie pies of the show, the youngest tots, who danced to the lyrics of Yeh Tara Who Tara har Tara from the film Swades. Their cute faces, little feet and hands in movement won many a heart.

Very soon hip hop met..hold your breath a bunch of pirates, on stage as the second performance of the evening was a glow in the dark razzle dazzle display of pirate foot work and jiving to the popular song” 1.2 step,’ by Ciara.

The mood changed with a colorful garba, the popular dance of Gujarat as children from Nritya Sankalpa performed with a pot with a light honoring the divine.

The mood changed as Bunty and Babli came on stage... Yes a group of talented young girls and boys set the stage rocking with the popular song, “Dhadak Dhadak", from the Abhishek Bachchan Rani Mukherji block buster Bunty aur Babli.

It was followed by the soft and sultry Arabian nights when the music and the moves by a group of boys and girls, brought back the magic of the Arabian desert and memories of stories we read so often. Next came the performance that always adds color, energy and pizzazz to any show-the bhangra.. The boys participating in this dance could not only do a mean bhangra they demonstrated their athletic abilities by cart wheeling across the stage with great ease.

The Shiva dance followed next. Performed by the students of Natyanjali, the performance was a homage to lord Shiva, as he dances within a fiery arch, holding the flames in his third eye, while those who pray to him receive enlightenment.

The Silent Killers, a well known dance troupe headed by Prem Rehman came on stage with an interesting concept called Shadow Dance where light and darkness played hide and seek with each other to pulsating music. You could create as many visual layers in your mind as you wanted because there is no limit to where your imagination can take you.

Young girls performed reflections a fast paced dance shimmering through the lights but the two outstanding performances were the Punjabi gidda by the lovely ladies of the club. The joie de vivre with which they performed had the audience cheering for them. It was obvious how much fun they were having on stage and that added to their charm.

Kumud Savla always excels in whatever she presents and students of her dance school Nritya Natya Kala Academy created the perfect grand finale depicting the various aspects of light and why its an intrinsic part of our life.

Perhaps the two disappointments were the comic spoof on Sholay, where the only saving grace were Joydeep Ghoshal and Alka Bhardwaj, in an otherwise draggy show which though it was meant to break the monotony of the dance performances actually ended up being a long irritant.

The other sore point was the poor emceeing by Dr Swaroop Nyshadham and I hope he will take this in the right spirit since he obviously came all the way from Alabama according to Ranjan. Dr Nyshadham for those who have known and seen him perform, is an excellent actor and director and a natural ham, but that day his jokes fell flat and his humor was more yawn inducing than laugh inducing. He even dragged Parijat Chandra down. Chandra had done an excellent job by herself last year. She had been charming, to the point and poised. This time she had to play a dumb second fiddle as Dr Nyshadham walked away with all the punch lines. May be in hind sight she should count her blessings that she didn’t have to mouth such inane tripe.

Humor is tough business and all good emcees, humorists, practice before a select audience before they go live. I can think of several natural emcees who would do an excellent job..Mohit Dhir, Umesh Rathie and Anita Gupta come immediately to mind. Any one of them could have paired with Parijat and made it an exciting evening.

The monologue from My Fair Lady, that Dr Nyshadham tackled next was totally inappropriate for the event and fell on deaf ears. There is a time and a place for something like this, and the diwali dhamaka was certainly not it. I hope Ranjan Dutta Gupta who is just so awfully nice, would put his foot down occasionally. It would have saved Dr. Nyshadham a lot of grief as well.
These two chinks notwithstanding, the show is getting better and better by leaps and bounds, and I can only see it being a key fun event to go to next year.