Over 2200 young South Asians from the United States of America and Canada will converge in Toronto in the next couple of weeks for a cultural extravaganza called Aatma: A journey of the soul.

Aatma is billed as North America's topmost South Asian cultural talent competition.

"Following the success of Aatma 2001 and 2002, Aatma 2003 promises to uphold its reputation as the premier South Asian cultural extravaganza in North America, celebrating the talent and creativity of the performing arts community," says Aatma 2003 chairman, Mihir Shah.

Besides Shah, five other young Indo-Canadians behind Aatma are Vivek Malhotra, Sevin Matthew, Hettel Nana, Amy Pandori, and Parag Shah.

"Our vision is to bring the culture of South Asia and showcase it on the world stage, with world class production and with major corporations behind it," Shah said.

"We are bringing in as many South Asian community leaders, professional leaders as possible so that we could showcase these individuals and show how far we have come in this country in the broader North American perspective in terms of (our) financial power, academic power," Shah said.

Some people, however, have pointed out that the organisers of Aatma should promote this cultural extravaganza among mainstream Canadian young people also and let it not be confined to South Asians.

Twelve teams [six each from the US and Canada] have been selected on the basis of originality, creativity and musical and choreographical composition to compete for a cash prize of $3,500.

There are over 50 submissions from across Canada and the Untied States. Selected teams from American Universities include the Buffalo State University, Universities of Buffalo, Chicago, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Pittsburgh.

Canadian teams include the McGill University, McMaster University, Ryerson University, University of Western Ontario, Waterloo and York Universities.

The sponsors of Aatma include the Royal Bank and the Telus Mobility. "The mainstream Canada believes in our project and, of course, they have (their own) business perspective in mind. At the same time they recognise the power of South Asians (in business and professions). We are (now) broadly more accepted in the Canadian and North American (business worlds)," Shah explains.