Tattad Tattad

It was a crucial day for the CJAM team- we kicked it off with an early wake up call to get as much work in before leaving to our location. We were hard pressed for time as we wrote out our concepts on large white paper, being sure to use more pictures than words as most of our clients can’t read/speak English.

We would be presenting three directions for an awareness campaign for CJAM- a human rights group that focuses on the providing equal constitutional rights to cantonment residents. Our plan was to pitch these ideas and work on a final campaign concept based on feedback and a group brainstorming session at their office. We meant business and had a lot of work ahead of us, so we needed to be efficient, precise and able to communicate well with their group. 

But, as we learned, time constraints can hardly stifle Indian hospitality. So there we were, 5 students and our translator (and CCO of ISAC) Aaron, politely sitting through several Hindi songs performed by our “client,” and then some. Seems the tables turned pretty quickly on us. To make things that much more exciting, we were asked to reciprocate by singing a song ourselves. Everyone in the group refused but as Aaron said to me, there was no getting out of it, so I mustered up some courage and started singing the only song that came to my mind in that moment- Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks (Read: a twangy country song about drunkenly showing up at you’re ex’s wedding and telling her what’s what). Not quite the subject matter you want to bring to a group of highly respectful Indian women. But somehow we managed to present and get to a space where some great feedback and ideas were flowing from everyone in the room. In the end, the meeting was a huge success.

We got home pumped up and ready for some wild Bollywood dancing, taught to us by Raksha. We saw some really great energy out there tonight with some excellent choreography by Henry “It’s a G Thang” Zhang and Matthew “Strike a Pose” Sabloff. If you want to know what we were dancing to, check out Tattad Tattad here: 

It’s outrageous and yes, your son or daughter knows how to perform (almost) every move.

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