This past Saturday, the Las Vegas Indian Seniors Group held a lively, sometimes meandering, but ultimately entertaining variety show performance – Bhuddha Hoga Tera Baap. Playing at the auditorium in the Flamingo Library to a sold-out crowd, our local seniors put on quite the production. 

The emcees for the evening, Yatin Daulat and Smita Chaudhry, got the show started after a minor technical delay, noting that community elders had come together to entertain the crowd over the next three hours. Daulat, kept the show moving throughout, with endearing “dad jokes” that had the crowd laughing and engaged between set changes. However, the emcees had a bit of a mismatch in energy, as Chaudhry notably lacked the same enthusiasm as her partner. Of course, emceeing a show is always a tall order, and both did great job in stressing the importance of community support through events such as this variety show. 

The show took the audience on a journey through some of Bollywood cinema’s most classic songs and included fun moments of innovative theatrical experiences and dances. Often the best performances came from the most-senior couples participating, as they showed their admiration for one another in recreating famous love songs from Bollywood’s yesteryear. These couples gave great attention and detail to their source material, and the addition of the original music videos playing behind them lent a crisp production quality to the performances. 

In keeping a light-hearted tone throughout, there were moments of levity sprinkled throughout the show. The women performing in the “Is Duniya Mein” number brought a dose of 1960s summer-fun to the show with great costumes and choreography. One of the more creative and silly moments came during the “Leg Dance” performance, where five ladies sat behind a curtain, only exposing their costumed-legs and proceeded to do a marionette-style dance. It was a great reminder from these seniors that even with little mobility, you can still take the stage and put on a show. Another absurd yet crowd-entertaining moment came during a “Laughing Exercise” portion of the show, where the audience was encouraged to recharge the brain through the method of laughing. While it reinvigorated the crowd it also made this writer think of the age-old question: are they laughing with me or at me?

As we neared the 90-minute mark of a well-run show, the pacing then faulted as the performances were paused for about 15 minutes. A usual thank-you to the director of the show, Chandra Mehta, by the emcees, turned into a soliloquy on the virtues of Mrs. Mehta, followed by her own long-winded speech. If you had heard the multiple times the audience was asked to give her a round of applause, you would have been mistaken to believe she had won an Oscar or Nobel prize. No doubt this took a large amount of creative direction, but this was a drag during an otherwise well-paced show.

While the show got back on track and rounded the two-hour mark, other interesting performances took to the stage, including the vision-blurring “Illusion Dance” and the comical “Lazy Dance”. Both cleverly used costumes and music to add to the uniqueness of the performances. After these two acts, I don’t think anyone could have summed it up better than when the emcee Daulat droned dryly, “wow anyone can dance”. 

In all, the Bhuddha Hoga Tera Baap show was a successful endeavor by the Las Vegas Indian Seniors Group. It takes a lot of confidence, energy, and effort for anyone to perform in front of a live audience, and this group of 30+ elders took on the challenge with heart and determination. This was a great way to spend a hot afternoon inside and the diversity of performances was a delight. The low cost for entry and the tasty snack provided at the end of the show added to the positive experience.  

The South Asian community should be proud to claim this group of seniors as their own, as it is clear, the kids may be alright, but the seniors are the ones having more fun.

As reported by an attendee