We hope many of you had the opportunity to take some days off and spend time with the family last week. It was great to see many of you at our Kadhalar Dhinam event in Reading over the weekend and hope you all had a nice evening.
This communication is a quick wrap up on our Valentine weekend event and a heads up for the upcoming IPL season and some excitement being planned around it 😊 !!
KADHALAR DHINAM : Valentine themed social evening at Shehnai, Reading
The last Saturday saw the community in Berkshire come together at our grand venue in Reading – the Olympia Ballroom at Shehnai for a Valentine’s themed evening of family fun. As always, our patrons arrived promptly allowing us get off to a timely start just after 6:45 pm with a brief introduction to I for India and key volunteers by Sathish Duraisamy, especially for a newbie patron.
The evening started off in a very relaxed, fun and informal way with a few games and icebreaker activities for the patrons and families. We had games in group / table formats as well as couples, comprising dumb charades, musical quiz, personality game / flip, etc… a very sportive and supportive audience made it so much enjoyable for hosts Sriv Venkatesh and Aditya Krishna to facilitate the games. As a token of our thanks and appreciation, we also had some prizes and souvenirs for the winning couples !
With the audience now in good cheer, it was the turn of our star guest to take centre stage. Super Singer title winner, Play back Singer and Composer Ajesh Ashok enthralled the audiences with melodies, duets and medleys from old classics to recent hits, including his debut hit “Idhu Varai” from the movie Goa. Ajesh was supported by a team of musicians from Nuvu Studios, as well as local singers (Sahithya Harikrishnan, Srigeetha Sri and Ramki Krishnamoorthy).
The musical from Ajesh concluded with a photo session with patrons, followed by the dinner break. We were pleasantly surprised to see a lot of talent among our audience who also inspired by the musical session, took their turn to entertain with dinner songs and performances. Shortly after, the much awaited DJ / dance floor was thrown open, with DJ Prakash belting out a lovely concoction of foot tapping Tamil beats, both old favourites and latest hits. The dance floor was packed to full capacity within minutes by our enthusiastic patrions, who danced their way until close of event just before midnight !
All in All…a lovely evening and a nice finale to the half term holidays … it was nice to see a lot of new faces from the area and make some new connections and acquaintances.
We had a lot of positive comments and appreciation about the venue, especially from many who did not know about Shehnai as a premium event venue in Reading. An event of this nature would not have been possible without the support of our partners and sponsors. We wish to place on record our thanks, gratitude and appreciation for our sponsors and partners, many of whom have been with us throughout our 3 year journey…. Thank you to our partners Lyca Remit, HDFC Limited, DNS Acountants, Lifeline Protect, Freedom Mortgage, Chennai Dosa / VEL Restaurant, Best Foods Reading for yet another successful event on the eve of the 3rd birthday of I for India.
We have a selection of pictures to capture the moments from the Kadhalar Dhinam event below :