Once upon a picnic

Once a year my school would take us on a picnic. Every day one section of one class would go. And since we have 2+10+2 classes and the lower classes have up to 10 sections it took us a good few months to get it all done. And the picnics were around the rainy season. Not the monsoon really. But Vizag has a late monsoon Jul/Aug and it has a cyclone storm every Oct/Nov. So you could have rain-free picnic but you could not bet on it. And it was short but it was fun. It had to be a school day so we left at 8.30 and came back by 1.

Picnic was fun at school. We would bring our toys out to the school. We would ride our school bus for about an hour and sing songs. At the picnic spot we would play games, play with the toys we brought, share the different food we brought, run around for no reason at all, sit around and play board games too and I loved the swing.

Most of the times we went to Mudasarlova. It's a reservoir with a park. Occasionally we went to Vuda Park. It is more or less the same, a park with some water body we weren't allowed to go near. In class 7 we went to Coca Cola factory and then to one of the above parks; it happened to be my birthday that day. In class 9 we went to a friend's farmhouse outside the city, it was beautiful. In class 10 we went to a beach resort, again not allowed to go to the sea, but we no longer ran around for no reason or played games. We just took pictures and gossiped!

It can't believe I remember so clearly each place and I even can remember little incidents on each and every trip, from class 3 to class 10!

On Sunday we had a picnic in Hyde Park.
We were so lazy we reached there at 2.45pm (actually it wasn't me, I increased the poundage of my bow and shoot about 70 arrows before I came for the picnic, and I dragged my bow along with me all day). We spread a couple of mats and settled down and really didn't move much. We didn't take pictures. We chose a good strong tree and spread ourselves out, some in the sun and some in the shade. It started raining in between and we pulled everything under the tree. It stopped raining in 20mins and the sun shone bright so we pulled everything into the sun again. We had tiny speakers blaring all kinds of music. We laughed until our stomachs hurt. We wrapped up everything but still went hunting for the sun. We lay on the grass under the sun for a while. And we left at 8pm because it was Sunday and we had the Monday Blues. But the sun was still shining bright.

 If you had been to Mudasarlova in late July and then to Hyde Park late July, you would know they are pretty much the same. I had a picnic, like in school. (Except I came home and cooked and cleaned and ironed clothes for tomorrow.)

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