{"id":2388,"date":"2002-09-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/09\/15\/2002-09-15-texas-program-helps-children-explore-hindu-culture\/"},"modified":"2002-09-15T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-09-15T12:00:00","slug":"2002-09-15-texas-program-helps-children-explore-hindu-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/09\/15\/2002-09-15-texas-program-helps-children-explore-hindu-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Program Helps Children Explore Hindu Culture."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.balagokulam.org\/\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>PLANO, TEXAS, September 4, 2002: A circle of 12 parents and children sit cross-legged in a yoga position, begins this report in the Dallas Morning News. They take a deep breath. As they exhale, they say, sonorously, &#8220;Ommmmmm.&#8221; The syllable fades to silence in the conference room at Plano Station, and the circle is still. &#8220;Who wants to play tag?&#8221; says the teacher, Ashish Chandra. The kids bounce to their feet. Classic Hindu culture and everyday childhood fun: This is Balagokulam, (see &#8220;source&#8221; above), a free weekly program that helps youth and parents learn about Hindu culture through fables, prayers and games. &#8220;We want them to feel comfortable in their culture,&#8221; says Bindu Patel, a Balagokulam teacher and homemaker. &#8220;It&#8217;s important to learn the facts, especially when you&#8217;re living in a different environment.&#8221; &#8220;It&#8217;s a way for kids to play and learn about Hindu religion and culture,&#8221; says Sandeep Gupta, a software engineer from Richardson who attends the class with his seven-year-old son, Shivam. Gupta says he&#8217;s glad his son has made friends in the group and hopes he&#8217;ll feel more comfortable with culturally specific activities, such as taking Indian food for lunch at school after seeing his Balagokulam friends eat it at a temple. Instilling good values. Donations from parents support the chapter in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where about 80,000 Indians live, according to the India Association of North Texas. Most students in Balagokulam moved to the United States within the last 10 years.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE PLANO, TEXAS, September 4, 2002: A circle of 12 parents and children sit cross-legged in a yoga,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}