MORGANTOWN — Morgantown and its Indian community happily collided Sunday.
You could call it a case of one community bear-hugging the other, if you like.
At the annual Gandhi Day Walkathon and India Festival in Evansdale, people came to celebrate diversity that can only be found in a land-grant university town in north-central West Virginia.
They came to remember the message of the Mahatma Gandhi, whose messages of peace, love and nonviolent protest influenced Martin Luther King Jr. in the U.S. while blurring borders and ideologies everywhere else.
They also did something else. They came to eat.
Especially that.
Amidst all that culture, the gathering at WVU’s Shell Building down from its Coliseum basketball arena still carried all the trappings of an American-styled covered-dish picnic.
The latter, in particular, was what organizers of the gathering especially wanted.
“You’re going to eat, aren’t you?” Vinod Kulathumani, asked of a visitor with a notebook. “You really must eat.”
Indian comfort food
There are anywhere from 100 to 150 Indian families in Morgantown, he said.
While they have WVU and other professional pursuits here in common, they came here from everywhere across India.
In the Shell Building on Sunday, tables were heaping with the dishes of home: Indian comfort-food staples such as Pav Bhaji, a thick vegetable curry, fried and served with bread.
Call that one the Mumbai equivalent of north-central West Virginia’s famed pepperoni roll: The dish was originally whipped up in a hurry for textile mill workers in Mumbai who didn’t have a lot of time for lunch.
Just like the pepperoni roll, which had similar beginnings here for the Italian immigrant coal miners needing a quick but substantial worktime meal, Pav Bhaji caught on and is now served everywhere.
Same for the Kulfi, the sweet frozen dairy dessert often described as “traditional Indian ice cream.”
“OK, I’m liking that,” said one blonde-haired, blue-eyed WVU student, as he went back for seconds.
A world of community
The informal day had an informal host: The Hindu Religious and Cultural Center, the Morgantown worship space that is the spiritual home to the Indian families here.
Twelve years ago, leaders at the center proposed the day to celebrated Ghandi and culture, while also raising money for community causes.
All proceeds from Sunday’s gathering went to WVU Medicine Children’s hospital.
Hospital director Cheryl Jones said the generosity will help sustain the mission of the hospital, which is to make often extraordinary hospital stays for youngsters as ordinary as possible.
For instance, she said, the hospital has retained a teacher who helps room-bound patients keep up with their lessons and homework.
“We’re so very grateful for your help,” she said.
Throughout the afternoon, people walked the track in support of the hospital.
Little kids, many in ceremonial garb of their ancestral homelands, laughed and romped in the Shell Building.
‘Gandhi would be very concerned’
Even as he smiled at the happy tumult, however, Charles “Chuck” DiSalvo still had to offer serious food for thought for the day.
DiSalvo, a WVU law professor, is the author of “M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law: The Man Before Mahatma.”
His 2013 book looks at Ghandi’s early life and times as a lawyer, and how injustice in society and in courtrooms put him on the spiritual, ethical journey that would define him.
Often to his case-law peril before stern judges, Gandhi, DiSalvo said, delivered his own verdict on truth every time.
“We’ve never seen a time in our country when truth is as challenged as it today,” DiSalvo said.
“Gandhi would be very concerned.”
Tweet @DominionPostWV. Email jbissett@dominionpost.com.
