On Friday, the Indian Students Organization hosted its first Indian Fall Festival in the Business College Complex, and Iyer was one of a number of students who danced in the show.

With several Indian festivals taking place in the fall, the Indian Students Organization decided to take the past month to plan one big event incorporating aspects from many of the festivals, said event organizer and graduate student Itishree Swain.

Although it took a lot of effort to put the event together, Swain said the end result made the experience worthwhile.

“(Until) last year, we used to just celebrate Diwali, (but) this year we wanted to celebrate all of the fall festivals together,” she said. “It was opening the culture up to everyone so that everybody knows about us. It was trying, but it was fun.”

The event included informative videos about Indian culture, a fashion show displaying Indian clothing and both traditional and modern music and dance. About 150 people attended.

Iyer said working with other students to learn Indian dance steps the past two weeks was her favorite part of the experience.

“I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to learn,” she said. “To be able to celebrate (Indian culture) and teach it to other people is great.”

Indian Students Organization Cultural Secretary and doctoral student Aditi Paul was the emcee of the show and said one of the goals was to extend the event’s outreach beyond fellow Indian students to people from all backgrounds.

Because there are so many different cultures and more than 50 languages interwoven in Indian culture, Paul said it is easy to become confused.

“Indian culture is confusing … but amongst that chaos an order comes in,” she said. “We want to address all of India, and we don’t want to offend someone by not including their region, so it becomes tough to include everything, but we try our level best.”

As she watched two students dance well after the event was over, Indian Students Organization President and doctoral student Sudha Sankar said she was excited to see such an eagerness and enthusiasm to learn.

Sankar said understanding the ability of a variety of cultures and languages to coexist in India can help with acceptance of the diversity at MSU.

“I know that the world is moving, and definitely MSU because of the large international presence is moving toward a sort of unity-diversity setup,” she said. “(We can show) people how this can be done and how it’s practically possible, even speaking so many different languages.”