The Office of Multicultural and International Student Affairs (MISA) hosted a celebration of the Nepalese festival, Dashain in the Pennington Student Activity Center on Friday, Oct. 14 for the many Nepalese students currently enrolled on campus. This is the second time MISA has organized the event, which started last year when two Nepalese students, Dipika Timilsina and Jubin Rajbhandari, both sophomores, approached the organization with the idea.

The festival itself is Nepal’s biggest holiday, which encompasses 15 days of celebration in which the people of Nepal celebrate the victory of the gods over wicked demons, such as Mahisasur, a demon who spread fear throughout the earth in the form of a terrible water buffalo who was slain by Durga, the divine mother goddess of power.

The first nine days of Dashain commemorate this great battle, and the 10th day commemorates when Mahisasur was slain. The last five days of the festival symbolize the celebration of the victory.

The entire celebration includes one day of traveling in order to be with family, gift-giving, especially clothes, bonus checks from the government, feasting, meeting family and friends, flying kites, the cleaning and decorating of homes, streets, temples and more, “pujas” or animal sacrifices to the goddess Durga, gambling games, the drawing of temporary tattoos on the body, and various fairs and celebrations in the streets.

MISA’s celebration included many things that are normally dispersed over the several days of the holiday, such as kite flying, receiving the tika (a blessing in the form of a mixture of rice, yogurt and a red pigment called vermillion) on the forehead from student Ratish Shrestha, who according to other students is the student from Nepal who has been at Southeastern for the longest amount of time.

“We’re very thankful to MISA for organizing all this,” said freshman Pradish Shahi. “I feel like I remember home because of all this celebration.”

Besides Nepalese students, there were several students who attended who had lived in America their whole lives.

“I learned I can’t eat anything as spicy as what Soni makes for me,” said Mason Glover, commenting on the extremely spicy food. It seemed to be no problem however for the Nepalese students, who said the food in America seemed very mild to them.

Students cooked the food with the help of MISA. The director of MISA, Dr. Eric Summers drove all the way to the south shore to find mutton to assist the international students.

“We try to support them,” said Summers, who attended the event and got the tika on his forehead himself.

Timilsina, who helped put the main presentation together and assisted in organizing the event said about the celebration, “It meant a lot to me because we are in a foreign country and we get to celebrate this festival, and it’s an opportunity for all the Nepali to get together as well as share our culture with all our international friends.”