Picnics – a Bane or Boon?

For the Bahria University’s Fall-2002 batch, picnics have been the most difficult and troublesome plans to put to task. With a variety of people part of the group, the needs of each one of them had to be met to not to offend or make anyone angry. The schedule is usually revised twice or thrice to set a suitable date for the picnic. But usually some people have issues with that particular date too, but this is all part of such events as they involve a large number of individuals each having a separate life with commitments.

The “Panchayat” were usually the flag-bearer behind the whole idea. The Panchayat included the 5 most active caliphs of the section, namely, “The habitual Offender”, “The Restless”, “The Bird”, “The Kabab” and some fifth person usually “The Gay”.

The First Step was to decide where to go; yet again the problem of “too many cooks” came into play as each one had a different opinion of where to go and where not to go. Discussions sprouted all over the section. Everyone could be spotted trying to convince the non-goers to join the party to increase the amount of funds and also fun, but mainly funds. Usually one individual was approached by at least 6 to 7 people sequentially and by the time the last one arrived the culprit would usually have had said yes to the offer.

As soon as the date and place was decided the responsibilities were automatically allocated to each one of the caliphs as soon as the dates were decided. “The Bird” was responsible for the financial management of the event and calculating how much each individual will have to pay. “The habitual Offender” was usually responsible for retrieving the funds for the picnic from the going and even the non-going people *=(*. “The Restless” – well he usually remained so restless about the event that it was hard to assign him a duty, but still he was responsible for motivating and gathering more and more people for the event. “The Kabab” was responsible for the food and “The Gay” was usually responsible for the transportation.

Even though these events should be more people-managed then being panchayat-managed but just to play the blame game the management task was assigned to the panchayat. Out of the 6 picnics, the management had to bear criticism for 3 of them, as the participants included some hard-liners, like the GecKo and the “Russian heart-throb” who were very quality conscious and required that everything be perfect or not be there at all.

After all the fund gathering was completed the responsible took-off for their individual tasks. Food, transport and location all were booked and it was made sure nothing was left out, which always happened. Out of the six picnics to have been arranged to date 4 were on a farm-house and two were on the beach. The latest one was held in the mid of last year at a farm house. The picnic was not doubt the worst ever planned picnic. The fun was marred by something totally unexpected.

I have personally attended, 5 out of the 6 picnics. The First one was the one I had skipped as then I did not have enough faith on the boys whom I was going out with. The second one was also planned on the beach, which I agreed to go to due to the fact that I couldn’t avoid the “pressurize-to-wipe-the-brain” therapy and also because by that time the boys had earned a bit more faith and respect in my eyes. This picnic was carefully chalked out and had very less or almost no flaws at all. The only thing that gloomified the picnic for a
few was the announcement of the semester result. Besides this the picnic was enjoyed to its most and remains one of my most memorable ones. Unfortunately, like mentioned above there was no camera available to store the happy and content faces of the picnickers who executed a successfully planned picnic.

From there onwards no picnics were arranged on the beach. The gang apparently got enchanted by the charm of the farm houses and wanted to have a go at this particularly new mode of picnics. The new experiment didn’t went that bad initially, the four farm houses we encountered were Adeel’s farm-house (Al-Syed), Black-gate farm-house (Mithoo knows the name only), The Best farm-house (Royal Paradise), The Worst farm-house (only zeeshan knows the name and its better than only he knows it). Out of the four experiences the first one (Al-Syed) and the second last (Royal Paradise) experiences were out-of-this-world ones.

The first experience was the most well-planned as it was the first one for almost all. The farm house had three sub-farms A, B, C. We made a booking for farm A. But since the farm was experiencing load-shedding *thanks to our power-supplying-tyrant KESC* and we were routed to farm B instead which was a heaven in Karachi. It had this big grassy ground, a very big pool and a large hall-like room. The most exciting thing about this picnic was that it included all of us even Salman Shahid and Farhan Sana. After a hell-of-a-night in the pool (which also made very clear what The Kabab considered as “mazaq” and what “not mazaq”) and a double wicket tournament in the twilight the money was well received and all were quiet tired. But the excitement incited everyone to go beyond their usual powers. The morning was gloomified *this time for all of us* by the caretaker as he came and informed “Bachoo! Yeh tumhara hissa nai hai…udher apnay walay hissay mein jao”. With great reluctance the gang agreed, the journey to the other portion started and ended shortly. The day was ruined when the first person went up to the pool to have a peep in it. The water was green-colored, OMG! Moss!!!! Hopes went down and all started cursing the caretaker *a few (lead by The Restless) ran away back to the old pool to have another dip in secretly but their plan was foiled when the caretaker came back with a stick :P but the Restless one was in the pool much before that :D*. Alas! All were sitting beside the pool thinking what to do now. Started throwing things inside the pool *being a Pakistani it was our duty to destroy what is not ours in a riot!*. Here another fun activity awaited us, DABBU. Many engrossed in this dry activity and started having fun again. All were like zombies then murmuring FUN! FUN! Whatever provided fun the whole mob turned towards it. When one went back to the pool the whole came back to the pool. The Restless one kept running between the two until there became a path in the grass from the DABBU to the Pool. Then a surprising thing happened one of the zombies jumped into the pool. The others watched from the ledge whether he survived or melted in the polluted green water. But surprise he came out alive and started laughing, all were shocked, it seemed the water contained some chemical which caused a person to laugh like mad. But then the Flower Khan *the ganda zombie who jumped into the dirty pool :D* said “Abay the bottom of the pool is green colored!!!”. All were like WTF! Green colored pool bed. !@#%$, #$%$@ and then one by one almost all jumped in except the few moronic zombies who still had doubts. The day ended on a good note and all were happy after executing back to back successful picnics.

To be Continued...