Boston Sargam’s 2014 Bollywood Music & Dance Competition witnessed a record turnout on Dec. 13th at Ashland High School’s Dr. Barry Ruthfield Theater. This year’s competition received an overwhelming response from highly talented participants, many of whom received massive rounds of applause from the audience even at the end of the fourth hour! The spectacular show included a professional audio-visual system, a unique custom-made backdrop, two large side screens, and many moving heads/revolving lights that more than underscored the magnificence of the high voltage New England dhamaka. The high-tech audio-visual system was supervised by professional light & sound engineers. Celebrity singer Ritu Sagar (playback singer in the movie “Jugni-NRI”) graced the function and mesmerized the audience with her mellifluous voice. Minoo Purshottamji (who has sung songs with Lata Mangeshkarji) came all the way from Chicago for a special guest appearance. This annual event marked the 5thanniversary of Boston Sargam.
 
The Dec. 13th show was a grand display of talent, passion, and creativity. Talented MC Roshni Mirchandani skillfully interacted with the audience and kept them engaged using her amazing event management and communication skills. Jaya Asthana, Paresh Motiwala and Tej Singh worked closely with Roshni changes for preparing needed scrips for the event.  The entire event was nicely coordinated and emceed by Roshni, who holds the titles of Miss India Rhode Island 2012-2013 as well as Miss Congeniality New England. She was one of twenty finalists for Woman of the Year 2014 from India New England, and was one of the youngest to receive this honor. In addition to emceeing events, she works as a teacher in Rhode Island in a low-income neighborhood, and consults in the field of education technology.

Himani Chawla, Ashwini Mishra, Pratibha Mishra, Rajbir Kalsi, and Sudha Bhutani also did excellent work at the registration desk registration. Bibek Das was instrumental in organizing the Mela activities. Madhumita Das introduces all judges. During the intermission, the audience and all other participants enjoyed delicious Indian food served by Bollywood Grill. Rajesh Bhutani was in-charge of ticketing and he did a wonderful job by creating a detailed ticketing chart that was easy for everyone to follow. He also surprised us with his lively audience interaction during the show. DJ Tej Singh, Jawed Wahid, and Mark Buchanan captivated the audience with their amazing audio-visual presentations, and Nikhil Gokhale managed to impress the audience with his video production skills. Backstage managers Jaya Asthanaji and Roshni Mirchandani made the event successful with their skillful management and vast experience. Lata Kumar was busy in taking care of special guest Minoo Purshottamji.  Special thanks to Jaya Asthana, Umesh Rao, Maddie Phadke and Vaishali Sabnis for their backstage support. The spectacular event concluded with the award ceremony and winners in each category were presented with majestic Boston Sargam trophies. Boston Sargam President and the ever enthusiastic Anil Chawla delivered a phenomenal speech towards the end of the event to congratulate the winners and to motivate all the program participants. Anil Chawla said, "We would like to thank all our lovely fans who came to support the Boston Sargam talent show on Saturday, December 13th, and gave us so much love and appreciation.  We would love to see you again in our next year's talent show."  Quoting Harivansh Rai Bachchan, the famous Hindi poet and father of Amitabh Bachchan, Anil emphasized upon the fact that celebrities like Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, and Amitabh Bachchan never quit trying despite facing initial rejections. His thought-provoking speech and words of encouragement were received well by the Boston Sargam community. He also quoted a wonderful Hindi poem sent by his long time friend Praveen Misra.

Tej Singh who worked closely with Anil Chawla said, "These sort of talent shows brings the community together and highlight talent that we wouldn't know exists otherwise.  Amazed to see participants with so much hidden talent in Boston, especially the Moms' dance on stage rocked. This new segment introduced recently was well received by the entire audience. All the 3 dances showcased by busy Moms were wonderful performances. Congratulations to all the choreographers who worked so hard with the contestants, and let's not forget to thank the parents as well. Many many congrats to the winners in each category."  

Upendra Mishra of INEN introduced our special guest, and Manju Sheth presented flowers to legendary playback singer - Minoo Purshottam. Ritu Sagar's dholmaster travelled from New York to showcase her prime time stage appearance.  Sagar presented two segments, along with Dancing Diva: Shikha Bajpai and Sandini Wijayasiri.

Boston Sargam would like to sincerely thank our final event judges for their exemplary work. Shaily Jaiswal, Vani Nidadavolu and Megha Shah adjudged the dance categories, whereas Minoo Purshottam, Anuradha Palakurthi, and Mohan Subramanian adjudged the song categories. Jewel Alam, Superna Biswas, and Jolly Bhatia were the judges for the song category for the auditions held on November 29th, 2014. During the auditions, Bharati Biswas, Ambika Athilat, and Monica Trivedi adjudged the choreographed dances from this category.

Special thanks to Suresh Sharma (Milan Cultural Organization) and LearnQuest Academy of Music for selecting the judges. We would also like to thank Jharna Madan (TV Asia), INDIA New England (Mr. Upendra Mishra), Lokvani (Mr. Anoop and Mr. Anil Saigal), Gunjan Radio (Mr. Bipin Parekh), Sounds of India Radio (Mr. Harish Dang) and and Gauri Chandna,  We are thankful to our core team members who worked relentlessly and passionately in promoting the local talent in the New England area. We are thankful to Prashanth Palakurthi, Prabhu Hingorani, Puran Dang, and Sanjay Thakkar (New York Life) for sponsoring the event.

Parvin Gill took care of food catering and provided delicious food from his restaurant Bollywood Grill.  Our sincere thanks to other hard working members who contributed towards a success of event such as Anit Gupta, Poonam Gupta, Bela Kaul, Bikash Verma, Rakesh Singh and Rekha singh.

Special thanks for Howard Stemper and his law firm who is taking care of Boston Sargam organization.

The Boston Sargam winners in each category were as follows:

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