Raising a Small Army

It turns out that the secret to a good arangetram is to convince others to the work for you. Granted, this only goes so far - I have to do the actual dancing myself, of course. However, just about everything else can be offloaded to others. When you have parents arranging an arangetram, this is obvious since the organization of the event is your sole focus, aside from feeding, housing, and chauffering the talent. In my case, I have been almost entirely focused on the dance part (and my job, and the usual chores of life) and basically ignored the organizational side. With one month to go this is no longer an option.

Enter Kjirsten, my pseudo-parent in shining armour.

Artist's Rendition of Kjirsten

Like Krishna leading the Pandavas and all those other guys, Kjirsten has taken up the cause of organizing my sad mess of an arangetram. So far, she has gathered a ton of volunteers by asking each person inidividually, and outlined all the tasks we have to do for the day, which at the moment is somewhere around one bajillion things to do. She is a rockstar, as are Savi, my classmate and Kjirsten's daughter, and Kjirsten's husband Vikram.

To give you a sense of all the things that need to be done, here is a highly abridged list:

• Lighting for performance
• Sound for performance
• Video for performance
• Photography for performance
• Make up
• Hair
• Costume Changing
• Sweat Dabbing
• Food for volunteers
• Food for guests
• Food for orchestra
• Transportation for special elderly guests

And so on and so on. I didn't realize how screwed I was until Kjirsten kindly asked whether I had volunteers for all of the above tasks. I stared blankly. Aside from laziness, the problem I have recruiting volunteers is what I would like to term caucasian shame. Basically, my people* don't have much of a tradition of calling on random people to help with work, especially ostentatious dance recitals. When you and your neighbour can't agree on which version of Jesus to believe in, how are you going to ask them to help you pick out snacks for your friends?

So now there's a ton to do, but things are getting done. Kjirsten, THANK YOU!

* You might notice my liberal use of the term 'my people', and confusing context switches where 'my people' transition from Canadian to Irish to Indian to *gasp* American all in rapid succession. You have observed correctly.