Dhoop Chaoon is a group that promotes Hindi through dances and dramas and is run by local talents who have passion for theater. It does not matter if you are a child or an adult; everyone is welcome in this group. The only thing a person should have is passion to perform to belong to this group. Mrs. Sandhya Bhagat, a talented and passionate person for Hindi Literature, started the group in 2007. The very first show was done for a local Hindi speaking Senior Citizen group in Atlanta. The group has been performing every year since then. It used to perform at Emory White Hall but now it has moved to ‘Berkmar high-school’ to accommodate a much bigger crowd.



The show is entirely run by volunteers and the financial needs of the group are met through private donations. As the name suggests, Dhoop Chaoon truly represents its name- dhoop (sunny) side when the artists come alive on the stage and put the stage on fire and audience responds equally with their thunderous applaud and whistles and chaoon (shady) side which shows the struggle for its existence in this material world where everything is done on the ‘for profit’ basis. Dhoop Chaaon group has about 70 members. Some of them are original members who helped the group the very first year and are still with the group and other members join and leave the group as their time permits them.



This year’s cultural program started with a slide show from past programs. One can see a unique style in every item including emceeing. This year’s emceeing was done by Vijay Gaur (an adult) and Ahmed Betti (a young boy). They portrayed to be twin brothers- one grew up while the other left behind, a twist enjoyed and appreciated by audience very much.
The very first item was performed by young children from Natkhat Rangshala- a new theatre school started and run by Mrs. Sandhya Bhagat since 2010. The children performed/danced to the tunes of famous old Bollywood melodies and poems. One could see that the children not only displayed their talent of moves and expression, they brought the memories of yester years to their audience. With these memories, these children will make their own legacies in their lives at the time when they are living so far away from their heritage.


The second item, a comical play called Nakta Raja, was also done by young artists from Natkhat Rangshala. These artists made not only young audience laugh so hard but they also made the older audience laugh that they were all jumping out of their seats. The artists for first two items were Arjun Mongia, Kabeer Mongia, Rhia Patel, Rhea Sethi, Hana Dalwai, Arshaq Ali, Ishani Chawla, Nikhil Upadhyay, Eshaan Jain, and Manasvi Reddy. The play was directed by Mrs. Sandhya Bhagat.  
The next item was Ande Ke Chilke – a comical story which was written by late Shri Mohan Rakesh. This story portrays the generation gap in the family dynamics where the young generation likes to enjoy the new things such as eating eggs that their elders would not approve of and so they hide it from their elders (mother-in-law and brother-in-law) under the assumption that if they find out, it will hurt their feeling or there will be clash between them. One thing this new generation forgets is that these elders themselves were young one day and they may have done many of these things themselves. In this drama, youngest daughter in law was played by Renu Thapliyal, elder daughter-in-law by Mrs. Shiva Upadhyay and three sons by Sanjay Saggare, Aashish Sharma, and Sanjay Tiwari. The mother in law was played by Mrs. Bharti ben Pandya and the big brother by Sanjay Tiwari. Again the play was directed by Sandhya Bhagat.

Parda Uthne se Pehle, another comical play by Rajendra Kumar Sharma was the next item of the evening. The story portrays the difficulties a Producer Director faces in producing a play. The hero of this drama, Anil (Anuj Jain) goes through so many problems while putting his drama ‘Adhoora Natak’ together. Anil not only faces problem at home convincing his wife for his coming late every day, he also faces problems at work where his heroine of his play, Tina (Hema Jain) drops out of the play just two days before the show. He tries to persuade his wife Sheela (Shaveta Jain), a typical homemaker, to take up the challenge and do Tina’s role in the drama. But the comical characters who are Anil’s assistant such as Suryakant (Lakshmi Kant Pandya), town goon Salim (Shree Vora), Press reporter Verma (Paresh Jain) and his son Munnu (Eshaan Jain) as well as his neighbors Laksmi (Vandana Tantia) and Amarjeet (Veena Katdare) keep disturbing Anil when he is trying to persuade his wife to play the role of Tina. After a lot of begging and pleading, Sheila agrees to play the role but the climax begins as Tina shows up in the end and poor Anil ends up pulling his hair because he never gets to complete his Adhoora Natak.

The show was interspersed with various energetic dance items chosen by Mrs. Sandhya Bhagat and choreographed by Dance Director Rahim Hussain. “Shree Ganesha Deva” set the stage on fire and hall was filled with once more shouts. Rahim’s energy was unbeatable and was very complimented by Tarana Malik and Vedita Gaur.
The last item of the show was a dance item called ‘Holi Tere Kitne Rang’ bringing different shades of Holi. Choreographed by Rahim Hussian and emceed by Aslam Parvez, this item displayed how Holi is played between girl friend- boy Friend (Tarana Malik and Sanjay Sagaare), husband – wife (Anuj Jain and Shaveta Jain), a widow (Ami Joshi) and a group of children. A group dance, ‘chan ke mohalla’ was presented by Ami Joshi, Shaveta Jain, Hema Jain, Purnima Patel, Tarna Maliik, Vidita Gaur, and Renu Kumar.

For the finale, the whole back stage volunteers and supporter along with all the artists came on the stage dancing to the rhythm of Oppa Ganagum Style. The list of back stage artists consists of Gandharv Bhagat, Sonia Madan, Chinti Bali, Vijay Tandon, Suprna Pathak, Gurupdesh Bedi, Anil Bhagat, Kartikay Bhagat, Navin Tyagi, Santosh Shelly, Shankar manhadevan, Rachita Manadevan (our little Volunteer), Advard,Ram Armogan, Emili Armogan, Inder Wassan, Madhav Kathdre, Tahseen Khan, Mustapha Azmeri, Anwar Azmeri (From TV Asia), Anjali Chabria (From TV Asia), Shahid Ali, and many others. Big thanks go to our volunteer team as they are very integral part of this show because without their support and hard work, this show cannot possible

Our financial supporters: Shamim Dalwai & Dr.Naazneed Dalwai, Dr Inder pal, Jack Patel, Jitan Singh, Rita kpahai, Kailash Khendelwal, Manjeet Bedi, Madan je Yadav,
The show concluded with a vote of thanks by Mrs. Sandhya Bhagat to all the volunteers, supporters, sponsors, audiences, media and Indian Pakistani sotres and participants. Making a promise to all to be back with another fun filled variety show next year, Mrs. Bhagat waved her goodbye to all.
Thanks to Byte Graph Prashant and his team for covering our program. (video and still photography)
www.dhoopchaoon.org