First Puranava India’s Arts & Culture Fest at Redding California 2025
Puranava was joyfully celebrated as an India Art & Culture Festival on December 6, 2025, at the Center for Spiritual Living (CSLR) in Redding, California. The event welcomed for a day filled with cultural learning and engagement. This vibrant event brought together families, volunteers, and visitors from diverse backgrounds—including Mexican, Fijian, American, and other communities along with Indians—to experience the depth and beauty of Indian heritage.
The program opened with a reverent Mahamantra Anthem prayer, led by GOD volunteers and CSLR Church Choir Group. The choir group took a lot of effort to prepare, learn and practice the Mahamantra anthem.
A variety of hands-on cultural activity booths enriched the Indian experience for the attendees. Booths featured Architecture, Spices, Rangoli, Diya-making, Arts, Traditional Clothing, Puppetry, Henna, and GOD organizational activities and publications including opportunities for spiritual class enrollment. The Puppet Show booth was also a crowd favorite, with interesting shadow puppet demonstrations that enhanced the understanding and appreciation of traditional storytelling. An engaging puppet show featuring stick and string puppets narrated a story from Sant Eknath’s life showing the value of compassion, and elicited enthusiastic responses from the audience.
A special highlight this year was the debut of Rhythm of Tabla demonstrating its rhythms, techniques, and how naturally it complements and supports vocal performances.
The turnout at the event exceeded expectations in the relatively smaller town of Redding, and with the dedicated support of volunteers from California Bay Area, the event was conducted smoothly and warmly. Heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Tim Bauer the director of Chooseredding.com for sponsoring the event, Rev. Sue Millerborn Senior Minister of CSLR, and Mr. Charlie Born, Religious Science Practitioner at CSLR. Special appreciation also to Ms. Gwen Rooker and her choir singers for their enthusiasm and support in performing the Mahamantra Anthem.
Puranava Redding 2025 stood as a beautiful reminder of how culture, art, and community can come together to create meaningful shared experiences.
