Ipshita Prakash – Sascha Pinto Engagement
The two families at the engagement party in Sweetwater Country Club in Sugar Land. From left, older brother Nicholas, his girlfriend Marie-Helen Boivin, father John Alfonso, mother Vera, Sascha, Ipshita, father Amey, mother Monica and younger brother Chintan.
By Jawahar Malhotra
SUGAR LAND: The families of Ipshita Prakash and Sascha Pinto came together over the Labor Day Weekend to celebrate their engagement with many friends from the Houston area at the Sweetwater Country Club on Sunday, August 31. A three-man jazz and pop music band serenaded the guests as the couple made their rounds among the white-linen tables and watched them even play a version of the Dating Game.
The Prakash family has relocated from Montreal, Canada a few years ago to the Sugar Land area and has quickly developed a large group of friends who they have come to call their “extended family”, a sentiment that Amey Prakash mentioned when he spoke very briefly at the engagement party.
Sascha’s older brother Nicholas felicitatded the engaged couple by remembering when they first met through a contact on Facebook and gently ribbing his younger brother. “People usually think he is the older one,” he joked “and most considered that he would end up with a non-Indian girl but as out turns out he has found Ippy!” Nicholas came to the party with his girlfriend Marie-Helene Boivin, who is from Montreal.
The engaged couple playing The Dating Game, responded to the audiences questions.
Amey and Monika Prakash’s daughter, Ipshita (who goes by “Ippy”), who will be 27 this December, got her MD from McGill University in Montreal and has finished the 2nd year of her 5-year residency program in general surgery there. She will be a taking a one-year hiatus by going to the London School of Economics, where she will pusue a Masters in Health Policy and Finance.
The Pinto family originally hails from Mangalore, India, from which John Alfonso Pinto and his wife Vera moved to Bombay and then migrated to Montreal over three decades ago. Their younger son, Sascha, 28 has a birthday in December too and got his mechanical engineering degree from McGill University and his Masters in Bio-engineering from the University of Toronto, Ontario. He will be accompanying Ipshita during her year in London. The couple is planning a destination wedding in Udaipur, Rajasthan in November 2015.
Amey Prakash is a Commercial Director with KBR and his wife Monika manages the home front. He is originally from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh and Monika is from Baroda, Gujarat. John Pinto is a retired CPA and Vera Pinto works in a real estate management company in Montreal. Ipshita has a younger brother, Chintan who has just finished his undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Texas, Austin and will be going to Burkina-Faso, West Africa, to complete his 28-month service in the Peace Corps.