Vijay Chopra
CHICAGO: The calendar for the month of June brings some special events. June 5 is designated as an International Environment Day, June 19 was Father’s Day and June 21World Yoga Day.
The Hindi Club of Illinois (HCI) in a special online event on Saturday, June 25, 2022 celebrated the trifecta of these events. Notable experts from India and USA from each of these fields joined in to share their views through a very interesting, introspective and impressive confluence of poetry, song, chat and conversation.
As is customary, the event opened with Saraswati Vandana prayer, this time performed by Shikha Mehta who also provided a skilled and dynamic compeering of the event. HCI founder president, Gurbachan Kaur, opened the event by welcoming participants from India and the USA and the audience connected live on Facebook.
Dr. Suresh Mehta, an expert on Environment from India in his talk, among other things, focused on Ozone layer depletion, carbon emissions and resulting global warming. He explained how interdependent and symbiotic relationships between various components are adversely impacting our lives. Our world and lives are like a delicate spider web, he said, where even a slight change in one thread reverberates throughout the whole ecosystem. Dr. Sweta Sinha, also an Environment expert, and a poet and writer from Iowa, shared an eloquently recited a very meaningful poem about what mankind has done to our planet earth and how to save it from further serious harm.
Bindu Bhushan Dube, an advocate for environment from India shared some stats and data some of which was stunning, serious and dire but most definitely thought-provoking about damage done to our air, rivers, waterways, forests that has affected all aspects of our lives and livelihood. He urged for strong international movements towards mass planting of specialty trees that clean pollutants from air more efficiently like the Peepal (Sacred Fig or Banyan) tree. Showing how passionately he practices what he preaches, he shared that at a personal level he himself has planted about 10,000 such trees over the years. Underlining message of all speakers was for each one of us to practice more seriously the key four R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink.
About Father’s Day, Sh Shailendra Gautam from India recited a very endearing and meaningfully emotional poem about the Indian traditional and cultural relationship between a father and his son. His deep evocative voice carried it to a yet higher level. Chicago kids, 9-years Saha and 11-years Soham sang a beautiful song written and composed by their mother, Shikha Mehta.
Vidya Nahar, a well known Chicagoland Yoga expert shared through her presentation and talk history, meaning and multitudes of advantages from regular yoga practice. She also demonstrated some simple and effective techniques for everyone to use in our everyday life.
The event was not only a celebration of our culture but also provided some timely and important awakening with snapshot of environmental issues. In closing Gurbachan Kaur thanked all the participants for their valuable, thought provoking and important presentations. She also thanked Shikha Mehta for her expert handling of zoom platform and a smooth and effortless emceeing of the event.
HCI is always looking for Hindi lovers to join us for contribution and participation in our growing weekly and monthly events. Please reach us at hindiclubevents@gmail.com.
For our weekly short story program email is laghukatha41@gmail.com. We also have a popular family oriented monthly Hindi magazine Drishti. Appreciate if you send your articles, poems or other creations to drishti@hindiclub.org. Or contact Gurbachan Kaur at 847 962 8595.
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