Picture this: you’re moving into an American university dorm for the first time. You show up with a few suitcases and your parents who will be gone by the end of the day. You’ve never met your roommate before, and chances are, you’ll eventually hate them because they leave socks and dirty dishes all over the floor.

The dining hall mac and cheese will taste great for the first few days, but by the end of the week, all you want is your mom’s dal chawal. You thought you’d love the freedom of being away from home, and you do, but you didn’t know how much you’d miss it, the smell of agarbatti and the sweet sound of old Lata Mangeshkar songs ringing out from your parents’ room at night. 

Whether you grew up down the road or a thousand miles away, the American college experience is daunting. When I moved into my dorm at Northwestern University, I was ecstatic for my first 48 hours and terrified for the next month. Each night, I’d down a bag of hot Cheetos, watch old seasons of Glee, and cry while staring mournfully at pictures of my (very alive) dog. Even on a campus with two thousand other freshmen, all of whom were as desperate for connection as I was, I felt entirely alone. 

Today, I can look back on my undergraduate years and confidently say they were the best of my life thus far. But my journey to joy and acceptance was rough, to say the least. I had underestimated how much the absence of not just my family, but my larger network– the random aunties and uncles and kids of family friends I barely knew–would impact me. I learned that to find my happiness, I had to forge my own community and replicate the sense of belonging I’d unknowingly felt for all of my life before that point. 

Most college students find their community in an over-stuffed room, where twenty-year-olds use elaborate tri-fold posters and big bowls of candy to lure unexpecting freshmen into their student organisations. These clubs can feel like major determinants of the person your college self will shape up to be. It’s like an evolution of the iconic Mean Girls lunch tables; are you going to be a hard-hitting journalist at your school publication, or will you party all night as a part of Greek life? Will you be in the stands of every football game as part of the marching band, or would you rather take centre stage in a student-led theatre production? 

In some cases, however, student organisations are an opportunity for reclamation rather than reinvention. Cultural clubs allow students to reconnect with their roots while they’re away from home. They become tethers to their backgrounds, bringing kids from across the country, or even the globe, together in celebration of their history. 

For South Asian students, these opportunities for cultural connection are endless. Virtually every major university has some form of South Asian student association, and more importantly, an extensive collection of Desi cultural clubs you can join. Oftentimes, the arts find themselves at the centre of brown students’ community-bonding experiences, as they’re presented with the chance to join dance and music teams across all styles, genres, and skill levels.

The first that comes to mind, the King of all South Asian clubs, is Bhangra. I never joined my school’s Bhangra team– frankly, I don’t have the cardiovascular skills necessary for something like that. But every time I heard their intro music roll in at a show, I screamed like I was faced with an Indian BTS. I’d never cared much for Bhangra before, but when they appeared on stage, I had a visceral reaction. It’s hard not to feel immense pride as large auditoriums of kids from around the globe cheer for something so unapologetically Indian.

I’m not alone in my enthusiasm for Bhangra. With elaborate routines and high-budget costumes, college Bhangra transcends from the realm of casual student organisation into a world of serious competition. Teams travel the nation to compete in collegiate Bhangra tournaments, dedicating themselves to several hours of practice every week to prepare. The United States’ oldest collegiate Bhangra competition, Bhangra Blowout, occurs annually at George Washington University, where eight of the highest-ranking teams from across the country fight for their chance to win the gold.

At the Georgia Institute of Technology, Bhangra thrives. The Georgia Tech team frequently appears in the Bhangra Blowout lineup, solidifying its place as one of the nation’s most prominent collegiate Indian dance teams. GT Bhangra’s Marketing Chair, Rasagna Vuppala, told Homegrown that they “meet three times a week for 2-3 hours and then five times a week the two weeks before competitions.” Their dancers maintain their hectic practice schedule on top of being students at a top university, displaying an impressive level of commitment to their craft. 

Yet they don’t let the pressure of high performance get to them. When asked about her favourite memory with her team, Vuppala didn’t cite the glory of winning a competition medal or the raucous applause after finishing a set. Instead, she said, “The nervousness we experience before performing at competitions can be so consuming, but still so unifying.” Their team finds gratification in their success, but really, the greatest product of their hard work is their bond.

The majority of the students in South Asian dance teams don’t aspire to be professionals in that field. Their dedication is rooted purely in a love for their culture and the friends they’ve made along the way. At Northwestern University, there are a multitude of dance groups a student can join. Now-alum Kashish Dhawan was captain of two of their most prominent, the all-women fusion group Deeva and the non-competitive team Ahana. 

From choreographing and leading rehearsals to coordinating bondings, Dhawan played an integral role in building the community her team members were seeking. Both clubs had lost traction in a post-covid landscape, but Dhawan made it her mission to revive them. By the time she graduated, her teams were thriving; Deeva entered the competitive dance world and Ahana’s audition rooms were packed at their last recruitment. 

What motivated Dhawan to push forward and fight for her teams? She told Homegrown, “Since dance is such a home for so many people, I didn’t want South Asians at NU to lose out on that community.” In university, community doesn’t always occur naturally. When everyone is new to a space, and their time there is transient as most students graduate and leave in just four years, it takes effort to find and build the network that will support them through their college years and beyond.

“Dance is a form of self-expression and lends itself greatly to the team dynamic. It fosters community in several ways,” said Dhawan. From collaboratively choreographing to learning and executing routines as a collective, “everyone involved experiences a collective feeling of fulfilment and celebration.” The same goes for Bhangra, where Vuppala stated, “The passion for dance is ubiquitous. People on this team spend so much time trying to become better and improve, that it naturally gravitates us to everyone else on the team.” Their love for dance fuels their love for their team, which then further propels their dedication to achieving success as a collective.

If you have two left feet, don’t fret. Dance isn’t the only art form with the power to forge deep and meaningful connections. The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Masala is an acapella group bringing not just their members, but their larger community, together through their music. Founded in 1996, Penn Masala were the first South Asian acapella group in the United States. Today, similar vocal teams can be found across the nation, taking inspiration from Masala’s immense success. 

The group boasts over 130,000 followers on Instagram, has over 30 million streams on Spotify, and just returned from the Paris Olympics, where their 13 members performed at the India House in the Olympic Village. Needless to say, they’re kind of a big deal. But their greatest accomplishment by far seems to be the tight-knit bonds they’ve created through their collective appreciation for music. 

Masala’s Business Manager and a member of the team, Gaurish Gaur, told us “The people in the group are some of the most genuine and caring people I know and we all share a common love for music.” As with the dancers, the depth of this team’s connection is based on how their passions coincide.

These students build a true family of their own in the university setting. Just as we at home honour our parents and the lineage before us, campus organisations have their own histories, founders, and legacies that they uphold through their work. Aryaman Meswani, another member of Masala, told us that many of their singers feel motivated by their vocal forefathers, thereby showing us that the community these clubs foster goes beyond ephemeral friendships. Student organisations create networks that run for life, a connective tissue between you and people who may have graduated years prior, but will hold a fondness for you through your mutual belonging to that group.

Of course, we can’t forget the pivotal role our culture plays in forging connections between team members. At an American University, where South Asian culture is by no means a default, we have to seek out the spaces that make us feel at home. Penn Masala does this by blending English pop tracks with Bollywood classics, creating medleys reflective of their own cultural experience as Diasporic Indians. Collegiate Bhangra upholds Punjabi tradition while dance groups like Deeva and Ahana fuse several South Asian styles in a blend that brings all people together. Dance and music undeniably bring people together, but it's the familiarity of our culture that rounds out the South Asian club experience. 

Indians often feel a disconnect with people in the diaspora. It’s easy to override our experiences as too dissimilar for us to relate to one another. But, ultimately, we all yearn for the same feeling of community. We all will miss our parents’ voices and the quintessentially South Asian elements of our upbringing that connect us all. Despite the drastic differences people across India and the world experience, our need to belong remains the same. 

Whether you’re shaking it on the Bhangra stage or belting mashups in an acapella group, one thing is clear: community is everything. These college clubs are more than just places to practice dance steps or harmonies—they’re little pockets of home in a world that can feel a bit too big sometimes.

Click here to follow GT Bhangra, Deeva, Ahana, and Penn Masala. 

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