Founding Members: Sri Vidyasagar and Smt. Rohini Tumuluri Sri Ramachandra & Anjali Reddy Sri Ranganath & Smt Krishna Kumari Vedala PRESIDENTS OF GITA -A QUICK RECAP Past Presidents of GITA:First to Latest 1979: Sri N. Ramachandra Reddy We were only few telugu families in Indianapolis during entire 70s. Sri Vidyasagar Tumuluri and Ramachandra Reddy were requesting and forcing us to take the Presidency for TAGI. Due to growing family needs were not taking it up. Finally I accepted it in 1980 calendar year. Even then we had the concept of Regional representatives from Muncie, Lafayette, Terre Haute and Crawfordsville. We use to meet almost every other month in a church, or Jenn Air Club, or in the basement of a bank at the South west corner of 126th street and Gray Rd in Carmel IN. We used to have always pot luck dinners only. I introduced showing 16 m.m. Telugu movies in Black and White. While the President does almost all tasks in conducting these meetings (including thrash pick ups) ladies took care of dinner arrangements. We used to p[lay cards after dinner.Total member ship no more than 15 families. 1980- Sri V. Srinivasa Rao 1981: Smt. Vanaja I was also forced to take the presidency, since my husband did not want to do for one more year. I just did what my husband did. While we enjoyed the fun of meeting the people we felt that it was taking too much time. Again, I had to request and force Smt. Lakshmi Rao to take up the Presidency. 1982: Smt. Lakshmi Rao 1983: Smt. Shanta Reddy 1984: Smt. Padma Ellur 1985: Sri D. Ramalinga Reddy 1986-1987: Smt. Annapoorna Sarma 1988-1989: Smt. Lakshmi Anne 1990-1991: Smt. Punyavati Moorthy. 1992-1993: Smt. Krishna Kumari Vedala 1994-1995: Smt. Gayatri Rani Devaraju 1996-1997: Smt.Anuradha Brahmamdam 1998-1999: Sri Siva Vavilala 2000-2001: Smt. Krishna Kumari Vedala 2002-2003: Sri Raghu Patibandla 2004-2005: Smt. Madhavi Jasti 2006-2007: Sri Raju Chintala 2008: Sri Dilip Vadlamudi 2009: Sri Sudeer Thondapu 2010: Sri Ajay Ponugoti 2011: Sri Satish Gajjala 2012: Sri Ramu Chintala 2013: Sri Amar Lingala 2014: Smt. Manga Rau 2015: Smt. Kavya Reddy 2016-2017: Sri. Naveen Cirigiri Recollections of Vidya Sagar Tumuluri We moved to Indianapolis in 1974. At that time, we had very few Telugu families in central Indiana. The India Association of Indianapolis was showing Hindi movies once in two weeks and conducting functions like Republic Day, Independence Day, Holi, and Diwali. We could not understand Hindi movies particularly the jokes, so we used to laugh along with the rest without even understanding it. For five years we felt isolated and frustrated. In December 1979, we had a get together of few telugu families in the library auditorium of Beech Grove, Indiana with a “pot luck” dinner and a 16-mm Telugu movie (Malleswari). And our Telugu association was born on that day. I was asked to be the first president of the association, but, I could not accept the position as I was very busy in my practice of hand surgery. We elected N. Rama Chandra Reddy as our first president of our telugu association. After his term we used to play a key role in finding the president for our association every time until 2002. We also played a key role in bringing many cultural activities to our city and hosted them in our house, like Kuchipudi Dance Drama of Sri Vempati China Satyam, Sri Bala Murali Group, Cine Playback Singers like Sri Rama Krishna, Smt. P. Leela, Sri Madhapeddi Satyam, Mandolin Srinivas, and Nookala Satyanarayana. From 1979-1982 we used to have pitch-in dinners, 16-mm Telugu movies, and playing cards “Rummie”, under the leadership of Sri Venkiah and Smt. Kamala Yedla. In 1983, Rohini, Shanta Reddy, and late smt. Annapoorna Sharma organized children cultural activities such as drama, dance, and fashion shows. Rohini directed the first children drama in Telugu with boys --“Brahmadu-Meka”. The children used tiny cue cards with their part written in English. The last drama was “Vapasu”. Shanta Reddy organized an Indian bride’s fashion show. Annapoorna Directed the dance programs for girls. In 1982 “Shankarabharam” movie was shown in a regular movie theatre in Carmel for the first time in the history of our telugu association. For the last three years we lost our regular job of searching for a president of our association. In addition to “Sahitya GITA” and “Sangeetha GITA” as wings of GITA, we also like to see origination and development of Sashtreeya Sangeeta GITA and Sashtreeya Nrutya GITA as wings of our association. |
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