Daylight Savings time starts March 12, 2017. Wake up an hour early.

We celebrated Pongal and Lohri on January 21st this year. A lot of volunteers came together to make this event successful. The Vidyalaya administration would like to thank Rama Akka & her mother, Sailaja Neelisetty, Seema Parthibhan, Shweta, Sravya, Anu Swarna, Uma Kondru, Madhavi Jayanthi and Teja Devireddy for volunteering and preparing the tasty Pongal food that was served. A special thank you also to Praveen and Umesh for picking up the samosas and distributing the food with tremendous support from Samhita, Laya, Vineeta , Sushmita and several others eager volunteers. Thank you to Sanjai, Vineet, and Anshuman for playing the Dhol. Lastly and perhaps more importantly, thank you to Hemant for capturing the day's festivities in some beautiful pictures. We are trying to figure out the best way to share the pictures with the Vidyalaya community (meanwhile, look out for them on our Facebook page).

A little bit about the day's celebrations in January. Traditional Rangoli welcomed us all at the school entrance. Telugu students did a small presentation about Pongal. Vibrancy of India was displayed in the eclectic ethnic outfits that students and their parents wore that day. We started with traditional customs of Ganesha pooja, aarti, and blessing the kids by the adults. The Pongal celebration peaked with Gobbillu dance by girls. We then switched gears with a rendition of the Sundri-mundariye Punjabi folk song for Lohri. We moved to the foot-tapping beats of Dhol, the Indian "happy drum". Folks danced away for a good 20 minutes or more in a celebratory dance for the harvest festival. Traditional North/South Indian food was served to wrap up the event.