By Seven weeks after being honoured with an award by the Hindustan Group of Institutions, one of its schools gave her the microphone, the stage and the prize table.
Chennai: A prize-giving ceremony is one of the longest-standing rituals in school life, and its format almost never changes. A child steps forward. An adult, usually someone distinguished, presents the trophy, shakes the child’s hand, and offers a few encouraging words. The adult represents authority. The child is the recipient. Everyone understands the part they play.
At Buckingham Hall in Karapakkam on Saturday, 8 August, the person presenting the trophies was only nine years old.
Victoria Isaac, who performs as Victoriastic, attended as chief guest for the closing ceremony of Esperanza 2026, the inter-school cultural and sports festival hosted by Hindustan International School. The day began at nine in the morning with the Tamizh Thaai Vaazhthu and the school anthem, followed by a full schedule of cultural and sporting events featuring teams from several schools across the city. By the time the valedictory session began, the winners had already been decided. What remained was the address, the performance and the prizes, and all three were the responsibility of the chief guest.
Seven weeks earlier
The invitation has a brief history worth explaining because it is unusual.
On 23 June, at Hotel Hilton in Chennai, the Hindustan Group of Institutions organised the Dr. K.C.G. Verghese Excellence Awards 2026 as part of its sixtieth-anniversary year. Among those honoured, alongside industrialists, academics and a judge of the Madras High Court, was Victoria Isaac, who was named Child Prodigy of the Year.
Seven weeks later, the same group invited her back, not to receive another recognition, but to take charge of the closing ceremony of its school’s biggest event of the year.
That is a different kind of endorsement from receiving an award. An institution can present a citation to almost anyone based on the strength of a file. Putting that same individual in front of several hundred students and their teachers, and trusting her with the final hour of a day the school has spent months preparing, requires having observed her work and concluded that she can carry a room.
The Chairman’s vision for the school
Dr. Anand Jacob Verghese is Chairman of the Hindustan Group of Institutions and Chancellor of Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science. Under his leadership, the group gained university status for its engineering college, established academic partnerships with institutions abroad, and now educates more than twenty-three thousand students across engineering, aviation, management, law, health sciences and the liberal arts. Its guiding line, reflected in everything it does, is to make every man a success and no man a failure.
Speaking at the group’s Excellence Awards in June, he described education as one of the strongest instruments of transformation and nation-building, and characterised six decades of the group’s work as a record of nurturing talent and creating opportunities for young people to discover what they are capable of. His own professional experience extends across nearly three decades in education and aviation.
Esperanza demonstrates what that vision looks like when applied to schoolchildren instead of appearing in a university prospectus. A school that evaluates its students only through examination results has a narrow definition of success and leaves a large number of children outside it. An inter-school festival broadens that field. It creates categories where a child who is not first in class can still come first at something, and it allows them to achieve it in front of visiting schools rather than only their own. It costs the host school money, staff time and a complete Saturday, which is the point: that level of commitment is what makes it more than a sentiment.
The selection of the chief guest follows the same principle. Victoria’s record is not academic. It consists almost entirely of skills she taught herself to develop, which is exactly the kind of achievement a school founded on that motto should be placing in front of its students.
The people who actually run it
Hosting an inter-school event is a logistical exercise presented as a celebration. Visiting teams need to be welcomed, registered, fed and kept on schedule.
Judges must be briefed and results compiled quickly enough for the prizes to be ready by the time the valedictory begins. Parents arrive. Nothing can be permitted to overrun.
That responsibility rested with Principal Ms. Bharathi Lakshmi and her staff, supported by the school’s leadership, including Executive Director Lt. Gen. Bobby Mathews (Retd.) and Dean of Academics Mr. Johnson Mathew, with Dr. Annie Jacob, Director of KCG College of Technology, among those present.
The measure of their work is that visiting schools noticed the organisation rather than any shortcomings. Very little of that effort is visible in photographs, yet all of it is the reason the day worked.
The last hour
Victoria’s segment took place in three parts: an address, a violin performance, and the prize distribution.
She spoke first, briefly, before a hall filled with students. Then she performed on the violin, which was what the room had been waiting for since her name appeared on the invitation. The reaction was what it usually is when she performs for an audience of children: a hall that had been managing its attention for several hours suddenly stopped having to manage it.
Victoria Isaac is felicitated on stage at the closing ceremony of Esperanza 2026, Hindustan International School, Karapakkam.
Then she presented the prizes.
That final part is worth pausing over because it accomplishes something a school cannot buy. A trophy presented to a child by a dignitary reinforces the familiar order: adults decide, children receive. A trophy presented by someone of the same age communicates something entirely different. It says that the person who has achieved remarkable things is not from a separate category of human being. She is from your category. She is standing where you are standing, holding out your medal.
Every winner at Esperanza 2026 returned to their seat having shaken hands with what is possible before eighteen.
What another school would be booking
For schools considering a chief guest for their own annual day or festival, the Esperanza booking offers two instructive points.
The first is that the Hindustan Group did not take a chance on an unknown person. They had already assessed her, honoured her in June, and then selected her to appear before their students in August. Repeat business from a serious institution is a stronger reference than any citation.
The second is what she is actually invited to do. Most chief guests give a speech and leave. Victoria gives a speech, a performance and a prize distribution, and the performance is the part students will talk about at home that evening. A school receives an address, a concert and a ceremony through one invitation.
She is nine, home-schooled, a student of the KM Music Conservatory in Chennai, and has spent the past year moving between award stages, care homes, corporate halls and now school festivals. School festivals appear to be the ones she enjoys most. The audience is closest to her own age, and it is the only audience that consistently asks her questions afterwards.
