By Jawahar Malhotra
CLEAR LAKE, TX: He has been a fixture of the Indian community in one way or the other for the past 50 years, working mostly with the India Culture Center and a few more, like the Hindu Worship Society and the Punjabi Culture Club. And even though Lachhman Das continues to live in Clear Lake, he and his late wife Lalita were on the southwest side of Houston on many weekends attending many of the events that they enjoyed and supported. From 2002 to 2003, he was the President of the India Culture Center.
Das was born in Hajipur, a small village near Dera Ismail Khan in the NW Province, in pre-Partitioned India. After the Partition, his family was in a refugee camp in Karnal. He attended Punjab Engineering College, Chandīgarh to get his electrical engineering degree and came to the US in August 1964 to get a Masters in Industrial Engineering from the University of California in Berkley.
He worked as an electrical engineer in San Francisco for 4 years, then for Pan Am in New York for 5 years and later at NASA for 23 years. He then worked for the City of Houston Engineering Department for 20 years from where he retired in his mid 80s. His wife, Lalita opened up a travel agency, Worldwide Travels, in 1976 on Kirby Drive which Das helped to run till they closed it in 1999. Lalita passed away in July 2023.
Many of Das’ close friends including Govind Baloor, Michael Lobo and Raj Chhikara organized his 90th birthday party on Saturday, September 20 at Bay Oaks Country Club in Clear Lake. It was widely attended by about 100 people and was catered by Bombay Brasserie restaurant.
