Report by Dinesh Kumar
Photography  by Uday M.K.

Dubai, Feb 5: All roads lead to Zabeel Park on Friday 3rd February. The Devadiga community members gathered at 8.30 am from all over U.A.E.  It was a gathering with short notice by few mails, calls and face book. This was the first activity conducted by the newly formed executive committee for the year 2012. The grand success of this event has been taken as whole hearted support to the committee and is more charged now to take up challenges to serve the community better.

Breakfast was arranged as the members started pouring in. Anshul Harish Sherigar started the proceedings by welcoming and quickly sang a small Ganesh shloka.  Advisor B. G. Mohandas, briefed about the history and the purpose of organizing such events. He urged members to join in good numbers and make the community grow stronger.

President Harish Sherigar, called upon and introduced the committee members and active members.
Sports secretary Laxmidas Rao, and his team conducted various group events like fun games, impromptu skits, mad ads and even singing.  The teams were intelligently selected to see no family members/friends were together. This gave an opportunity to meet new members face to face and develop new friends. Some new talents were also discovered during the day. Finally the Chocolate brownies team won the overall. The Peedarico face cream, Pulita adar, Devadiga Fitness Centre, Sunban/ Haywards glasses, Haywards Rumwater in mad ads & Ee Sambhashane, Kolu Mande, Koropolenkulu, Bhagyada laxmi, Chalte chalte, Kadlabari songs were to name a few which kept the audience laughing. A sumptuous lunch was served.  During the break Harish, Dileep, Sunil Devadiga and Santhosh Belvai entertained with their melodies. Nithyanand Beskoor, one of the active members of the community entertained children with some riddles.

An appeal made by General Secretary Dinesh Kumar, towards an ailing brother of one of our member drew tremendous response. In minutes a generous amount was collected. Advisor Narayan M. Devadiga then handed it over to Santhosh Devadiga. Collections are still to come and collected by committee.

Ramesh Devadiga, Dileep Devadiga, Umesh Karkal, Yashoda Mohandas, Sharmila Sherigar, Bharat Kumar, Pushparaj Devadiga, Sandeep Devadiga, Naveen Kumar, Harsha Laxmidas, Prabhakar Devadiga, Dinesh Sherigar, Sharath Kumar, Purandhar, Balakrishna and many more were the powers behind the successful event.

Harish  Sherigar concluded the evening unfolding major plans for the coming 20th anniversary, tentatively fixed on May 18th. He urged the members to come up with good entertainment programs which are to be show cased for the whole day.  He mentioned that if any community member in distress, be it health or job related, to be immediately reported so that help is extended in time. Umesh Karkal, an artist himself and a dynamic committee member talked about the launch U.A.E. Devadiga group and Devadiga Sangha Dubai on face book. He suggested how it is to be constructively used.

On the whole it was a memorable evening.  A special thanks to Harish & Sharmila Sherigar who lead the team from the front.