Shas­tri Boodan

Pan­nist Joshua Re­grel­lo will per­form at the Taj Ma­hal in In­dia in the com­ing weeks. He made the an­nounce­ment on Sun­day evening dur­ing a per­for­mance with tabla play­er Shiv­an Seenath at the clos­ing night of the Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions.

Re­grel­lo, who pre­vi­ous­ly per­formed at the Great Wall of Chi­na, told the au­di­ence he was proud to con­tin­ue shar­ing the sound of the steel­pan on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. “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,” he said.

On 28 De­cem­ber 2024, Re­grel­lo en­tered the Guin­ness World Records for per­form­ing a 31-hour steel­pan marathon, the longest in his­to­ry. His Di­vali Na­gar set fea­tured the bha­jan Ban­do Cha­ran Ka­mal Raghu­nan­dan and an in­stru­men­tal ver­sion of Pehli Nazar Mein, orig­i­nal­ly sung by play­back artist Atif Aslam in the 2008 Bol­ly­wood film Race.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo an­nounced that Di­vali Na­gar 2026 will be held from 26 Oc­to­ber to 5 No­vem­ber un­der the theme Raj Raj Nithi – Pol­i­tics or State­craft. He said the theme will ex­plore the eth­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of gov­er­nance and the prac­ti­cal ex­er­cise of po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

In his Di­vali mes­sage, Man­ga­roo urged cit­i­zens to fo­cus on fam­i­ly and cul­tur­al con­ti­nu­ity. “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,” he said.