ICCL Senior Citizens Honor High School Graduates

HOUSTON: The Senior Citizens of the Indian Cultural Association of Clear Lake (ICCL) hosted its 19th annual high school graduation luncheon to honor the graduates in the Clear Lake area.  Since its inception, there have been over 800 graduates that have been honored through this program.  This year there were 53 graduates, and 28 attended.

This tradition began under the leadership of the late Sanjiva Rao Allam.  He had the idea in 1998 to honor the graduates, and organized an event, which has now become an annual event that the community looks forward to.  The organization of this event was later taken over by Radha Golikeri.  B.G. Harchandani has now taken over the reins for the last 2 years.

In the program this year, introductory remarks were made by President Ashok Tripathy and Radha Golikeri, who welcomed the students and their families, and provided some guiding thoughts. Dr. Ashok Tripathy spoke to students to keep relationship  with parents while in college. Radha Golikeri also spoke about the history of this event and she gave students Golden advise “Hard Work”citing an example which is true even 70 years ago, when World War ll_ended,three senior corrspondents from New York Times were sent to interview British Prime Minister Winston Churchil, US general Eisenhower and Eleanor Roosevelt who was pioneer drafting the” Declaration Human Rights”_All three were intervied independently about same time,” what single factor do you attribute your successful life”.Coincidently,but strangly,all three of them gave an identical answer of just two words HARD WORK.  Some of the graduating seniors then got involved with Harshini Ganesh singing the US National Anthem and Perry Alagappan singing the Indian National Anthem.  Both did a fantastic job.  Perry Alagappan, a salutatorian from Clear Lake High School, was also the student speaker.   He gave a motivational  speech . The keynote speaker, Balaram Muddapu, was introduced by Radha Golikeri as being intelligent, accomplished and having a terrific green thumb.   Dr. Balaram is a former university department head for Mathematics and Computer Science, and currently runs the Quantum Energy Healing practice in Friendswood, Texas.  He was heavily engaged in student centered partnerships between academia and industry and encouraged the students to connect with their professors, with industry and government leaders, and with each other to make themselves known.  The theme of his speech was to Connect and Thrive. He identified various opportunities and pathways for students to get more involved at college, to further both their growth and their future careers, through research, grants, internships, government programs like NSF’s STEM program. etc.  The value of these partnerships for all those involved is that it helps create good workplace behaviors as students prepare for their future careers vs. having to learn them once they start their careers.  He also reiterated several times the value that each student has and the impact they can make in this world by work grounded in love and good energy.

The event concluded with each graduate receiving a small gift from the senior citizens.  These gifts were distributed by Mohini Harchandani and Syamala Muddapu.  A vote of thanks was given by the organizer, B.G. Harchandani.  Harchandani thanked the donors, Mogul restaurant, the Sanjiva Rao family, and the ICCL community.  Flowers were presented to Dr. Balaram and his wife Syamala.  Finally a delicious lunch was attended by 111 community members at Mogul Indian Restaurant on Bay Area Boulevard.