Saturday 30th June 2018, East area celebrated the Father’s Day Special at Saint Johns Church Hall, St Johns Road, Seven Kings, Essex.

The event started with a prayer, welcome to the members and then served with delicious food. It was debra prepared by Sunita and Shanti, two curries made by Lata and Bharti. Salad from Chandan. Followed by a dessert of Fruit salad with Ice Cream from Sunita and Shanti and sweet pineapple from Rasikbhai. Everyone enjoyed the meal and a delicious dessert.

Then we started the father’s day programme.

Sunita explained how fathers day started, the purpose behind it and why it was celebrated all over the world. Also, this was translated by Shanti Shah in Gujarati. Everyone was asked to say something about their fathers and all the memories they had of their father.

In Short, the conclusion was that how our father’s or grandfather’s faced all the difficulties and how they came to start a new life in the new land, penniless to settle in Africa. How they faced the difficulties in a new land, language, food, shelter etc. and worked hard to bring their family forward. Their priority was education and they made their children go to school. Again due to problems in Africa many decided to come and settle in England, India and America.

At the same time, Asians from Uganda were expelled in 1972, ended in this country and especially without any money and settling down again in a new country. Now we have passed five generations in this country and how we have prospered and our children with education and good positions for the company they work.

It was a really heartbreaking evening and to find that some have never seen their father, and have no memories as they had lost their father at an early age. It was an eye-opening event and also we celebrated the evening by paying homage to our fathers.

And to end the programme Sunita sang “Maa baap ne bhulso nahi” and paying homage to our father Mahatma Gandhi with the song by Narsinh Mehta “Vaishnav Jan to Tene kahiye je peed parai jane re” programme ended. Everybody enjoyed the evening.

To see more pictures, click here.

To read Gujarati version, click here.

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