Culture and Merit Certificate

Well today Tejas was presented with a Merit certificate for getting 25 stars . They have a system in his school where they give stars for good performance. For example if they write neatly, or do all their math problems correctly, or do well in any subjects in class they get stars. It is maintained in a slip attached to their communication book. There are stars for participating in extra curricular activities like sports, music etc.
Well he had collected 25 points earlier and was given a Merit certificate last month.
They have another system in his school and each class has its own assembly for which parents are invited. It is called year assembly (like year 5 assembly) . All students participate in cultural activities like music, drama etc. They have some theme also. In this assembly Merit Certificates are distributed. For his year assembly Tejas participated in a drama, and no body got any Merit certificate as it was just held in the year beginning.
Last month it was Year 4 Assembly and I was specially invited as Tejas was getting the certificate. The theme was Greek and there was some Greek skit and some programs related to Greek History.
Today it was Year 3 Assembly and again I was invited as my child was getting the Second Merit certificate.
Today's theme was Deepavali. There was a small skit where an European girl was dressed in a Saree and the kid was looking very very cute and a Boy in a Jubba and pants and they were decorating their house and lighting lamps and inviting people home and were exchanging sweets and putting 'Rangoli' with coloured rice . They even mentioned that 'murukku' is special dish of Deepavali.

This is how Malaysian Indians celebrate Deepavali in Malaysia . Then they said they would like to enjoy the festival with some dance. Music was played and the Hindi song Gunguroo... Gunguro...... was played and the music was catchy and some few kids danced to the tune so nicely. The music was not offensive but very nice and the beat was good. It was nice to watch girls wearing ghagra cholis and dancing away that too nicely. I could see all the parents enjoying the Malay muslims, the Chinese, the Africans the Europeans, American and of course the Indian parents were all clapping away to glory.

Again in the end since all the kids wanted to dance to that song, the whole year group all dressed with jubba and pyjama, Salwar kameez , with some of them even having 'malligai ' on their hair danced really nicely to the song. This time parents and the other class kids who were watching also got up and joined in the fun and were all swaying to the nice beat.
This set me into thinking. Now Indian culture is slowly becoming synonymous with hindi film music. I some how liked it this time, thinking why not? Even Bharatha natyam which is now considered as the epitome of Indian culture was considered as taboo only a century or so back. As long as the gestures are nice and the song good I felt good to be represented as Indian by Hindi Music. I was thinking that we should encourage kids to learn three languages, Mother tongue, Hindi and English and definitely children will be able to do justice to all the languages if they learn from class one. Already Hindi movies are so popular everywhere and even in Malaysia they are very popular. I do see lots of good movies are being made in Hindi. Slowly good movie songs and movies will become part of our culture. Instead of fighting against the language let us slowly integrate ourselves with the national language without forgetting our mother tongues.

I felt elated to see so many kids from other cultures doing justice to Indian Culture and felt good.
N.B. They served each parent with a small packet of 'murukku', Earlier during Tejas's year assembly they distributed ginger bread shaped cookies as they enacted a play by name ginger bread girl. Normally they also arrange a nice snacks and tea for all the parents who attend the Year Assembly.