Dr. Monoranjan Bezboruah, President, ASSNA

The just concluded 33rd Assam Convention in Calgary, Alberta, Canada was a great success.  The Assam Association of North America (AANA) was formed in Houston, TX in 1980, and since then each year the AANA has held the Assam Convention in different places/cities in Canada and in the United States.  During the Assam Convention, AANA holds its General Body Meeting (GBM), and its literary wing—the Asom Sahitya Sabha, North America Branch (ASSNA), and its non-profit wing, the Assam Foundation of North America (AFNA) also hold their respective GBM.  
Every two years, office bearers are elected anew, and this year, the AFNA had its new office bearers installed.  The Convention released AANA’s mouthpiece – the Luitor Pora Mississippi (LPM), a magazine organized by ASSNA and published for AANA during each Convention. AANA and ASSNA will have its new office bearers elected during the early part of next year and each organization will install its new officers during the GBMs in next Assam Convention, the 34th, to be held in Detroit, Michigan.
The Calgary Assamese community is profusely thanked by each attendee of the Convention for doing such a stupendous job!  The 33rd Assam Convention was a roaring success, as are the most of the Conventions.  The youth from Calgary, in particular, made us proud with their super-active participation, their dramas, skits, songs, and dancing made us also feel young again! They are striding both the cultures so well!  The food was superb, the arrangements were impeccable, and in each category, the Host Committee earned kudos from each of us.  
In each Assam Convention, we try to bring artistes from Assam.  Our goal is to offer the venue and the forum for our artists back home which otherwise might not be available, and in the process, we and our young generation get a glimpse of our progress and developments back home (in India), and the artistes too see as to who we are, and how we are maintaining our culture and heritage here!  This year’s artistes duo—Dikshu (Sarma) and Barnali (Kalita) –enthralled us!  We wish them a great future ahead, which of course, seems a certainty!  Our Best Wishes and Blessings are always with the young artistes of Assam!
Like in every other Assam Convention, this time too we felt a bit melancholy at the conclusion of the event.  It is a feeling like the Post-partum blue!  But, we feel cheerful again knowing the fact the Assam Convention for 2013 will soon be with us!