16 Ana Bangaliana: A joyous celebration of Bengali culture
The “16 ana Bangaliana” event hosted by the Research and Development Club commenced on February 12th and lasted for three days. The event was attended by the entire student body of Brac University. The entire team of ‘Close-up Kache Ashar Golpo’ was present there, which included the talented Director Amitabh Reza Chowdhury along with Enayet Chowdhury.
The entire mission of the event was in celebrating the coming of spring by showcasing the unmatched beauty of Bengali to the students of BracU. “The vision of the event was to celebrate the beauty of Bengali culture and encourage the youngsters to cherish their roots. Celebrating festivals always bring people together so we wanted to create an atmosphere where people would enjoy and learn about the Bengali culture. As this is one of the first 3-day wide events after the Covid-19 pandemic, we faced some challenges such as gathering volunteers and communicating with such a large team but it all worked out in the end,” said the club president, Ahsanul Mahbub Labby (Sophomore, BBS).
To keep up with the theme of Falgun, the entire Building 2 Cafeteria and Building 2 Auditorium were decorated in mesmerising colours of yellow, orange and red. The stalls placed at the Indoor cafeteria of Building 2, were one of the many attractions of the event. Those were packed with beautiful antique jewellery, colourful churis, affordable cosmetics, fun stickers and much more while offering hefty discounts for the students. To satisfy the grumbling stomachs of the attendees, the event served up food stalls on Prangon that sold mouthwatering food items starting from fried rice and spicy chicken to colourful cotton candies. The auditorium itself was rocking as volunteers from 9 clubs lit the stage on fire with their jaw-dropping performances.
The event had many unique features such as encouraging all the attendees to wear sarees and punjabis, the traditional Bengali attire and speaking in Bangla throughout the event to celebrate Bengali culture. Additionally, the Research and Development club also surveyed to find out the preferences of the attendees regarding their favourite Bengali cuisine, attire and much more which put a nice spin on the event.
