An Autumn Festival happening at the community hall of the Vedic Society Hindu Temple. Its open to all members of the public. To tell us more about it joining us in the studio is President Sujit Sahu of the Southampton Puja and Cultural Association. Good evening to you.

Good evening to you.

Nice to meet you in the flesh. We spoke last year and you were off in London.

Yeah! I had work there, so I could not avoid that. Thanks for inviting us back then and now.

Oh, no sure. This will be a big one this time. Last year was the first year of the puja.

Yeah, we have doubled in size in the mean time.. starting from your show. Thanks to your show, we have doubled in terms budget, partipation and cultural festival that we are organising.

Yeah. I was going to say it was stressing thay the festival you are organising this weekend it has its roots in Hindu but its a multi-cultural.

Its a multi-culturaral, multi-religious activity as well. Basically after the lunches and dinners we have cultural functions where everybody can come. You will see lots of people from other religion they will perform as well. If I can give a bit more detail about the cultural functions I will be happy. Its for everyone. Its not like only Spanish Music going on or only Bengali thing going on, but its western pop and rock even some bollywood songs, some of our Bengali culture as well.

Tell me little bit Sujit, for people who have not heard of puja before, what exactly is it, where are its roots, what tradition its coming from.

Its from West Bengal in India and Bangladesh. Its an annual autumn festival of the Bengali people. Because we are here we are trying to take it to local people. So it should be known as a Southampton local festival and we are rying to attract people from all religions and all the communities.

Ok, I am going to play a little bit of music, some traditional drum music. [Music plays ....]

Yeah, this is played during Durga Puja, and we dance around to lift the mood up. Typically, beating of the drum means its that festival.

Ok.

And we have live drum music during the Puja this weekend.

The idea that you take these traditional Hindu elements and combining these with...

In a bigger context...

So tell me a little bit more about the other bands. You mentioned Spanish music, rock and pop.

Friday evening we have Indian Classical and Bollywood singing from Dr Pooja Angra. Then we have tabla and sitar you know the sitar, we have a confluence wth tabla, sitar, with classical songs from world famous artists like Pundit Biplab Mandal and Pundit Tirthankar Banerjee. On Saturday afternoon... we thought... after the introduction in your programme last year, we saw many people turned up on Saturday afternoon.

[Laughs..] We would like to take all credit for that but now it will be a bit unreasonable.

This time we thought why not put a local band. We have a western pop band with a frontend female singer Melissa and then we have Spanish music following that. So if you are not doing anything you can visit us. Also we have free refreshment before that, and our last programme Sunday is very important, because we are doing a theme based ladies and children dance drama performed by our own people and we call that Nari (the Women). Its our effort to worship, celebrate and encourage the strength of women. Whatever donation we get we will portion some of that and give it to a charity who are working for the plight of women in the Indian sub-continent. So at the time of our biggest festival we can help others.

I am going to show my ignorace here, when we talk of Indian dancing we think of Bollywood dancing. Your folk dancing, is that similar to Bollywood dancing?

We have folk dancing what typical village people will do. Thats an art. We will have Bollywood music as well. You will not be surprised if you hear live music and dance like Jai Ho on Saturday evening.

Ok, how does it work then? Is it just a case people coming along get tickets or anything?

No, no! Admission is completely free. we have refreshment during lunch and dinner times. We have a donation box, you can drop five pence if you want.

When you say refreshment, do you mean any of that nice Bengali food? [Laughs...]

Yeah, its Bengali food. Its Indian vegetarian food with Indian sweets as well. Everyone is welcome.

Its at the Vedic Society Hindu Temple.

Yeah! Can I just thank our sponsors this time. We have been supported by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Foundation for doing these cultural functions and also Art Asia and the Vedic Society, without their help we cannot do this festival.

I wish all the best of luck this weekend. Hope its a terrific turnout. We won't take all credit for it! [Laughs..]

Yeah! All are welcome. People can log-on to our website www.southamptonpuja.org.uk and find more infornation. People can search for Southampton and Puja.

www.southamptonpuja.org.uk and that is the presidet of the Southampton Puja and Cultural Association Dr Sujit Sahu..

Music plays: Jai Ho....

BBC Radio Solent. So its www.southamptonpuja.org.uk you can find out whats happening this weekend.