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Photo: G. Moorthy

Wild celebrations Dancing to the tunes

The year 2008, a leap year according to Gregorian calendar, the most widely used calendar in the world, brings with it 366 days with the month of February containing five Fridays - it starts and ends on a Friday.

No New Year celebration is complete without parties. New Year eve revellers, cutting across all ages, converged at various hotels in Madurai. Their swelling numbers with each passing year is an indication of the city’s growing love for partying and merry making.

Over the years, New Year celebrations have changed with party organisers churning out new and innovative ideas to amuse their guests. This year too was not different. Different and hilarious concepts had revellers engaged in some boisterous crowd partying to usher in 2008.

A salient feature of this year’s celebration was the transcendence of the age barrier. What was considered a youth-dominated affair saw parents and kids take part in the revelry with equal enthusiasm. Middle-aged married couples took to the dance floor with élan and in some cases the grand-dads also shook a leg.

Hotel Madurai Residency’s roof-top venue for the celebrations provided a bird’s eye view of the Temple City, which was bathed in attractive colours. The hotel saw couples of all ages take to the stage for dance competitions as the music band doled out foot-tapping Western numbers.

A few hilarious rules were added to the dance competitions, making the event thoroughly entertaining. Even four-year-olds could not resist themselves. They fought sleep to join the older pals in the pulsating and rhythmic swaying movements.

With music egging them on, men and women unwound themselves at Hotel North Gate with some wild dancing. Spread over three floors to accommodate the 300-plus guests, the organisers ensured that diners and dancers went about their business in peace.

Bachelors had an attractively-lit dance floor all for themselves with no intrusion from the fairer sex.

The boys danced themselves to the brink of exhaustion.

The New Year Ball at Fortune Pandiyan Hotel, organised and managed by the Rotary club of Madurai Metro, featured a Hawaiian theme. The event — christened ‘Hawaiian Luau’ (luau meaning feast with entertainment in the awaii Pidgin Sign Language) — was a fundraiser for various charitable works undertaken by the club, according to the organisers.

Held in the lush open lawns in front of the hotel, the décor and ambience were in tune with the theme, as tables/counters and the stage-cum-dance floor reflected the icons of the Hawaiian Islands.

The guests were also attired in Hawaiian robes. They were given a tender coconut n arrival and ladies were given a ‘lei’ or garland as is done in Hawaii with men sporting straw hats.

The event featured over 175 couples including several guests from as far as Chennai, Coimbatore, and Karaikudi. Several foreign guests staying at the hotel also participated in the celebrations. With some fabulous music blaring, the dance floor was packed.

Some interactive competitions held the audience in rapt attention. In particular, one of the contests was that all the eight seated on a table should dance with the best team bagging the honours. It saw all three generations, right from grand father to grand son, in full swing.

The dance floor was as filled with middle-aged couples as it was with the teenagers and 20-somethings. Moms danced with their daughters while fathers danced holding toddlers in their arms.

All parties featured the regular mix of lucky draws and bumper contests with the victorious walking home with major prizes from air conditioners, colour televisions and washing machines to free airlines tickets and hotel stays.

Firecrackers lit up the sky in all hues as the hour approached. Hundreds waited under a clear, cold sky to herald 2008.

Armed with New Year’s ‘resolutions’ to turn a new leaf or to embark on new pursuits, revellers surged into the streets under the watchful eyes of the police posted at all major junctions and streets as motorists yelled at the stroke of midnight.

Mercifully, no disastrous events like the one in Chennai marred the celebrations here. Temples and churches also witnessed an influx of devotees who prayed for the New Year to bring with it peace and prosperity.

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