Welcome to our Vasant Panchami holiday celebration!

We've changed up the music! The traditional sitar mp3 has been traded with a really fun modern mix, Enjoy :o) To keep the music playing, please open up the post links below by right clicking on the post titles and choosing "open in a new window". This music moment has been brought to you by Shanti Ashoka *s*

The holiday (VP for short) is intended to welcome in the first signs of spring and to honor the Goddess Saraswati. Revelers adorn themselves and their homes with yellow decorations and robes, an aspect we will be doing here in the form of avatar decoration. The Goddess Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge, science, river waters and learning. To that end, we will be teaching a Sanskrit word a day for you to learn. The festival also will be highlighting Indian arts and music, and we'll be posting both modern and traditional music in this thread throughout the festival. There will also be decorations and adornments to take back to your pavillion handed out!

This thread will hold all the above and is also our jumping point to our other VP related events, which we are very proud to present to you.. please visit each and see if it interests you!

Tour India - created by Shanti Ashoka and presented by Bharat Mata Tours, this event runs to end of festival. It's fabulous, go check it out!

Take the Taj! - an interactive storytelling competition where participants start the story of how the Taj Mahal came to be after initial post, and take it wherever they wish. It is requested participants sign up for this event now so that others may invite them into teams (though teams are not mandatory) and begins Saturday, 11:00 AW time until Sunday 11:00 AW time.

Two (2!) fun India quizzes created by Shanti and Desi, located in the new Quiz thread, going on now till end of festival. Quizzes are on fun modern India and traditional Indian topics.

India Block Party - we close out this year's Orient New Years festival with this event. Dont miss it, during it's duration awards for Lantern decorating, Great Bean Hunt (and the list of good luck charm recipients!) and Take the Taj competitive writing contest will be handed out along with our last Foreign All Star awarding. Event is on Sunday at 14:00 pm AW time and will last a few hours at least I'd imagine!

The citizens and scribes of The Orient wish to thank Shanti Ashoka for organizing our Vasant Panchami festival, along with the members of Bharat Mata.