SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Pan­nist Joshua Re­grel­lo is set to be­come the first steel­pan play­er to per­form at the Taj Ma­hal in In­dia. He made the an­nounce­ment on Sun­day evening dur­ing a per­for­mance with tabla play­er Shiv­an Seenath at the clos­ing night of the Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was sched­uled to at­tend and ad­dress the fi­nal night of the cel­e­bra­tions but did not ap­pear.

In­stead, Re­grel­lo be­came the main at­trac­tion at the Di­vali Na­gar on Sun­day night.

On De­cem­ber 28, 2024, Re­grel­lo made his­to­ry when he be­came the world record hold­er for the steel­pan marathon, per­form­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly for 31 hours — a feat that earned him a place in the Guin­ness World Records.

Dur­ing his per­for­mance on Sun­day, Re­grel­lo paused to wish the packed au­di­ence “Subh Di­vali” and re­flect­ed on his hard work over the past five years to build his reper­toire of In­di­an mu­sic. He ex­pressed pride in per­form­ing at the Na­gar, say­ing, “In two weeks I would be­come the first steel­pan­nist to per­form at the Taj Ma­hal as well, so you can look out for that jour­ney. It means that the work we are do­ing, there are re­sults. To all the youths in the au­di­ence there is a path you can fol­low and that path is hard work.”

Re­grel­lo’s set in­clud­ed the bha­jan Ban­do Cha­ran Ka­mal Raghu­nan­dan and an in­stru­men­tal ren­di­tion of Pehli Nazar Mein, orig­i­nal­ly sung by play­back artiste Atif Aslam in the 2008 Bol­ly­wood film Race.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC), Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo, an­nounced that the Di­vali Na­gar 2026 cel­e­bra­tions will be held un­der the theme Raj Raj Nithi – Pol­i­tics or State­craft, which will ex­plore both the eth­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of gov­er­nance and the prac­ti­cal ex­e­cu­tion of po­lit­i­cal pow­er. He ex­plained that next year’s theme aims to ex­am­ine the re­la­tion­ship be­tween moral prin­ci­ples and re­al-world po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy.

Di­vali Na­gar 2026 is sched­uled to run from Oc­to­ber 26 to No­vem­ber 5.

Man­ga­roo com­mend­ed the NCIC ex­ec­u­tive for their ded­i­ca­tion and vol­un­tary ef­forts in en­sur­ing the con­tin­ued suc­cess of the an­nu­al fes­ti­val.

In his Di­vali mes­sage, Man­ga­roo said, “Let us fo­cus on fam­i­ly for it is with­in the home that our tra­di­tions are nur­tured and our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty is passed to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. Let us cher­ish our chil­dren, guid­ing them with the wis­dom of our an­ces­tors and em­pow­er­ing them to build a fu­ture root­ed in in­tegri­ty, re­spect, and com­pas­sion. And let us reaf­firm our com­mit­ment to our na­tion, work­ing to­geth­er to strength­en the bonds that unite us as one peo­ple, di­verse yet har­mo­nious.”