A group of Upper School (US) students carefully placed the final gumball on their gingerbread house in the hopes of winning the competition. Nine members of the South Asian Student Alliance (SASA) recently attended a Jan. 8 South Asian Community Event at The Rivers School for a night of food, trivia games and a gingerbread house-making contest. SASA Co-Presidents Shay Patel and Ayana Karthik (both ’26) organized SASA’s participation.
Ara Surati ’29 attended the event.
“I wanted to network with people in the South Asian community from other schools,” she said. “This event made me feel empowered because I met a lot of cool people with a similar background and experiences.”
Ara bonded with other SASA members.
“I made a deeper connection with a lot of the upperclassmen,” she said. “We played a lot of games that were divided by school. Learning from the upperclassmen and seeing their experiences was like a mirror. They’ve been through a lot of what I’ve been through. There’s a lot of similarities between us because we’re all at the same school with similar cultural backgrounds and values.”
Nick Narasimhan ’26 went to the event with his friends.
“Personally, I’m not too in touch with my Indian side,” Nick said. “Being able to meet people who are in touch with it and see how that looks for them helped me learn a bit more about my culture. The best part was being able to hear how Indian communities interact at different schools.”
US Math Department Head Meena Kaur chaperoned the event.
“The event was really important for kids to hear from other schools about their successes and some of their struggles so that our own students can feel pride in what they’re doing or get ideas. It’s great to be aware of what’s going on in today’s teenage climate of affinity spaces.”
Ms. Kaur said the event aligned with SASA’s goals.
“Our goals are just to build community and have that space available to our students. It was very uplifting to see that there are communities at other schools. It’s a nice preview to what students will experience in college or at university where there will hopefully be a bigger South Asian community that they can get involved with.”
Ms. Kaur said she wished for more interactions between the schools.
“It was a good opportunity for students to bond and connect with students from other schools. To improve, offering opportunities to mix up the students from different schools would be a good suggestion. This would help drop an ‘our school hangs out with our school, their school hangs out with their school’ precedent. It was still great to be in a small room together and hear the conversation and laughter.”
