Students enjoying themselves at a previous year\u2019s Diwali celebration, put on by the Camosun College Student Society (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201c[Students] who follow Indian culture, they always bring those traditional clothes, one pair or two pairs of clothes in their suitcases,\u201d says Solanki. \u201cAnd for them, this could be an opportunity where they can wear those clothes. So yes, here we are asking students, if you want to wear your traditional clothes, yeah, go for it, wear it. Because we don\u2019t have so many days to be in them.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Diwali is the next major holiday coming up, the CCSS makes a habit of sharing celebrations from all over the world. While much of the motivation is to make students from other cultures feel welcomed, it also serves to build understanding for students outside those traditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor every culture, whenever we do such events, we want people to learn more about different cultures and not to feel offended when you first see them, maybe because they were brought up differently,\u201d says Solanki.<\/p>\n
Solanki feels strongly that students benefit from getting out of their comfort zones and participating in other ways of understanding\u2014something Solanki pushes himself to do regularly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe just had a Korean festival in which we participated,\u201d he says. \u201cAt first, I was a bit scared. It\u2019s a different festival. How about if I don\u2019t fit in? My first step was I just asked a friend, a friend who\u2019s from here, I asked him, \u2018Can you please take me?\u2019 That way I have someone right next to me. Even if I was still scared\u2026 There are similarities in every culture\u201d<\/p>\n
Solanki has first-hand experience with bridging these gaps in understanding. Being outgoing, he has a lot of new friends he\u2019s made in Canada, but they needed to take that extra step to feel they could connect with his other friends who were also from India.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I have some friends who are from here and they are so comfortable with me. They\u2019re like, \u2018Okay, dude, you\u2026 [have] different Indian friends, but you are different from them. It\u2019s like the way you talk, the way you make me feel comfortable,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cBut then I was like\u2026 let\u2019s all go out sometime. We did. After that, we are all a group now. They were like, okay, yeah, you were right, actually. It\u2019s just that maybe in the beginning, that person was shy, so he wasn\u2019t able to see how my other friends are. I wasn\u2019t shy, so that\u2019s why it took a different route.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diwali is an opportunity for students to learn more about the world, and to take the initiative to broaden their horizons in the most fun way possible: at a party.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m just excited to have Diwali to see how students will react,\u201d says Solanki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) will be throwing a big party for Diwali this year. Considered to be the most important festival in Indian culture, Diwali celebrates a triumphant moment in Hindu mythology when Rama and Sita were reunited and everyone in the kingdom illuminated the city to welcome the couple home. CCSS external […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,320],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-october-30-2024"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25960,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25958\/revisions\/25960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/IMG_4574-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a>