LIBRARY COMMITTEE
2024
Chairs: Suman Murali, Geeta Kannan & Jaya Vatsyayan
The IAL Library Committee, which includes Geeta Kannan, Suman Murali, and Jaya Vatsyayan continued the momentum in 2025 for working with Cary Library Memorial Foundation (CMLF), the fundraising arm of Cary Library, by engaging with the community and volunteering for the success of the transformation of the children’s room and the large meeting room at Cary Library. The library committee members passionately contributed and promoted the fundraising “Take Flight” gala for the Children’ Room Project (ChiRP!) hosted by CMLF on 06 April 2024.
Indian Madhubani Folk Art Workshop
In celebration of the festival of Diwali, the library committee is partnering with Cary Library to organize a 2-hour workshop on 06 November from 6:30 to 8:30 pm ET on Indian Madhubani Folk Art, led by Raksha Soni. Her previous workshop on Kalamkari at the library drew many participants and was immensely enjoyed.
Mixed Desis Book
Cary Library is collaborating with the IAL library committee in organizing an event featuring the author of the book, "Mixed Desis", a journey of identity and belonging in multicultural America. This would be a fantastic opportunity for our community to engage with the author, Punita Khanna, and explore the themes of diversity and inclusion depicted in the book.
Did you know?
The Cary Library has an enthralling catalog of approximately 400 books in many Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telegu, and Tamil, and in children’s category. Cary Library, with support from Indian American Fund, have compilation of approximately 70 books written in the English language by authors of Indian origin. These books are available under a variety of categories including food and cooking, arts and literature, biography, religion and mythology, and history, society, and politics. If you have a suggestion about a book, please do drop us a line @ IndianAmericansofLexington.org.
2023
The IAL Library Committee, which includes Geeta Kannan, Suman Murali, and Jaya Vatsyayan have been actively working with the Cary Library Foundation, the fundraising arm of Cary Library, to garner support from the community for ChiRP!, the upcoming project to renovate and transform the Children's Room and Large Meeting Room at Cary Library. We encourage the community to be on the lookout for opportunities to contribute to this much-needed, exciting project, so our littler readers and community at large can benefit.
Did you know? The Cary Library has an enthralling catalog of approximately 400 books in many Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telegu, and Tamil, and in children’s category. Cary Library, with support from Indian American Fund, have compilation of approximately 70 books written in the English language by authors of Indian origin. These books are available under a variety of categories including food and cooking, arts and literature, biography, religion and mythology, and history, society, and politics. If you have a suggestion about a book, please do drop us a line @ IndianAmericansofLexington.org.
The library committee also partnered with Cary Library to organize a 90-minute workshop on 05 December 2022 on the Indian Folk Art, Kalamkari, led by Raksha Soni. The workshop was enjoyed by a room full of participants drawing an intricate peacock design in Kalamkari.
2022
March 24, 2022: Holi Festival - The Colors of Spring Art Workshop
Java Mehta led The Colors of Spring art workshop at Cary Library. Java personalized color blending techniques to an enthusiastic bunch of kids this evening. She was supported by Hetal Joshi and Anaya Joshi
April 5, 2022: A Sweet and Savory Holi
Supriya Danda offered a virtual demo of how to make delicious, sweet, and savory combos at home on the occasion of Holi. Her technique to make Dry Fruits Laddoo and Makhana Chivda was easy to follow and well received.
October 2022: Rangoli on the Idea Wall
Rangoli, Pulli Kolam and Paisley art adorned the Idea Wall at Cary Library throughout October to celebrate Diwali. We thank Varsha Malghan and Sudha Balasuryan for being generous with their time and artistic skills.
October 18, 2022: Diwali Story Telling and Diya Painting Workshop
Over 15 third to fifth graders painted diyas, with Bollywood music playing in the background. Middle schoolers Aditi Manocha Wadhwa, Diya Nigam and Akhil Venkatesh narrated the story of Diwali from different parts of India and how they celebrate Diwali at Lexington. We thank IAL volunteers Monika Manocha Wadhwa and Sudha Balasuryan for their support that evening.
Dec. 05, 2022: Kalamkari Art by Raksha Soni
In this Kalamkari Art Workshop Raksha Soni, an award-winning artist, will teach how to draw a peacock. In Kalamkari paintings, the peacock represents peace, passion, prosperity, and harmony.
2019
We are excited to announce that our library core team comprising of Geeta Kannan, Jaya Vatsyayan, and Suman Murali has doubled in size this year to include Lakshmi Mandava, Chitra Sundar, and Sandya LK. Together we have had a busy year of conducting programming events with the wonderful staff at Cary Memorial Library. None of these events would be possible without the support of volunteers who show up, time and again, to help us out as needed.
April 12th, 2019 - The annual Fairy Tale Ball was a blast. Jayshree Rajamani captured the attention of the little humans with her storytelling through Bharatanatyam at the Cary Memorial Library’s Fairy Tale Ball event.
May 30, 2019 - Workshop on Indian Herbs and Spices. We discussed historically known medicinal and nutritional properties of Indian spices and herbs and explored which of them may be immune boosting, anti-inflammatory, digestive aide or even anti-carcinogenic in nature. It was an evening well spent learning how we can make a difference to our well-being with the help of these friendly herbs and spices in our everyday meals. The workshop was led by nutritionist, Sneh Jaysingh, who planted the seeds of holistic well-being in our community.
Summer 2019 - Yoga workshops - we had three yoga workshops at Cary Library between August and September, two of which were for teens and the other one being for adults. In the workshop, we learnt how to focus and balance, how the mere act of slowing down your breathing dissipates stress, fear and negativity, and the simple act of connecting to the limitless energy of the sun through sun salutations. All three workshops were led by yoga practitioner, Harshal Morparia.
October 2019 - Watch out for the South Indian golu coming alive at Cary Library in the second half of October in the doll exhibit area!
2016
IAL also has a long history of collaborating with the Cary Memorial Library. IAL participated in Fairy Tale Ball on April 15, 2016, and offered Indian storytelling using dance drama as a medium to communicate Indian folk tales and offered a henna station.
IAL has raised funds, organizing an Indian wedding “A Visual Odyssey” last year in partnership with the Cary Memorial Foundation and collaborated with Pinot’s Palace in Lexington on May 20th and 21st this year.
These two events raised funds for the new initiative, ‘Transformative Spaces’. Transformative Spaces will give us a better Library, one that connects people with help and resources more quickly, utilizes space more flexibly and efficiently, and offers Lexington’s teens their own space to learn and grow. Cary Memorial Library has offered to have a plaque for IAL in the World Language Collection section as a result of IAL’s continued efforts to support the library.
