Around 3,000 residents of Bandung, West Java, counted down the arrival of 2018 on New Year’s Eve in a slightly unusual manner: with a festive parade of Indian culture.

The Indian Embassy in Jakarta cooperated with the Bandung city administration to host the Indian Cultural Week, which was held from Dec. 30, 2017 to Jan. 5 in various venues across the city. The highlight of the week-long celebration was a lively parade featuring music and dance performances, which was conducted in Bandung’s spacious public square on the evening of Dec. 31.

The parade featured artists who had been selected by the Jakarta-based Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Cultural Center (JNICC). The cultural week was inaugurated by Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil and Indian Ambassador to Indonesia Pradeep Kumar Rawat. This was also the first time that Bandung hosted an Indian Cultural Week. To mark the event, the Bandung city administration also decorated the city’s entire downtown area with Indian and Indonesian flags.

Besides the parade, the cultural week also featured numerous events, namely, a tourism seminar, a food and film festival and a photo exhibition commemorating Indian-Indonesian diplomatic ties.

The tourism seminar was conducted in Bandung’s legendary Bidakara Grand Savoy Homann hotel on Dec. 30, attended by around 100 people; most of them were representatives of tour and travel companies as well as airlines from both Indonesia and India. During the seminar, several travel agents delivered presentations on collaboration opportunities between the two countries in terms of tourism promotion. Among airline companies represented in the seminar were Air India and Jet Airways, which explained about the connectivity options for travel to India.

The food festival, meanwhile, was held at the hotel’s Garden Restaurant from Dec. 30 to Jan. 5. The hotel’s chef prepared special Indian dishes for guests who came to enjoy the Indian cuisine, well-known for using various blends of spices, herbs and vegetables.

Besides offering various dishes, the cultural week also presented an Indian film festival from Dec. 30 to Jan. 5 at the city’s iconic De Majestic Theater, which was opened in 1925 and remains the oldest theater in Bandung. The film festival, organized in cooperation with India’s Zee TV, presented Bollywood films, the movies for which India is famous, watched enthusiastically by around 150 Bollywood lovers.

The film festival featured contemporary Bollywood films such as English Vinglish (Gauri Shinde, 2012), Tanu Weds Manu (Anand L. Rai, 2011), Love Aaj Kal (Imtiaz Ali, 2009) and Rock On!! (Abhishek Kapoor, 2008), among others.

Meanwhile, the Bandung Creative Hub, which was inaugurated by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Dec. 28 hosted a photo exhibition commemorating the India-Indonesia friendship spanning seven decades.

The exhibition featured 31 historical photos, showcasing the continuously warm relationship between Indian and Indonesian leaders over the decades. Highlights of the exhibition included the visit of former Indonesian president Sukarno to India in 1950 as a guest of honor in the latter’s first Republic Day commemoration. The relationship was then connected to the present, with Jokowi’s visit to India in December 2016.

The exhibition attracted a large number of young people, who were interested in discovering more about the long-standing Indian-Indonesian bilateral relationship, as well as the landmark 1955 Asia-Africa Conference, which took place in Bandung.

– Photos courtesy of Indian Embassy