School picnics

I studied in the same school for 12 years. From the first grade to the twelfth.

And we used to have this mandatory manic student picnic/trip every year. Mandatory because the enthusiasm levels mustered by the organizers was in reverse proportion to the mayhem we were capable of generating. So the more moronic the trip the more ruckus we could create.

And for the first 4 years the venue was always “Guindy Park”. Ask any kid who was born in the late 70s in Madras about Guindy Park and you would see this very distinctive look which bridges a whole lot of emotions and expletives. This was a place so mind numbing that the mayhem potential was quickly culled out.

Guindy Park had a lot of advantages. It was bang in the middle of the city, meant that we could do a day trip and be back in school second half. It dint really have too many exhibits, meant that we dint have to spend too much time there and be back in school second half. We usually went on a weekday which meant that there wasn’t too much of a crowd and be back in school second half. (My school really dint think too much of activities done outside school premises)

The biggest advantage was of course that most of the kids had already been there with family on some weekends or had already been part of an earlier school trip to the same venue. So we could pretty much be left to our devices as we would know the tour path and the accompanying teachers dint have to do too much policing.

For many years when the zoo would get a new animal, anything from as innocuous as a field rat or as dangerous as a bandicoot, there would be immense coverage in The Hindu. (Note: I said The Hindu and not the newspaper, we dint acknowledge the existence of other newspapers, but that of course is a topic for another day) I would like to think that the attendance swelled with hoards of bored looking kids being dragged towards the GP.

Oh I forgot another big advantage of GP was that there was this Mahatma Gandhi memorial right next to it. A fairly bleak empty place with pics of the grand old man and some sad looking portraits with some of his quotes. Not really telling us about who he really was nor what he said nor what he had done. Definitely must have been part of some centenary celebrations and the dude heading the govt then wanted his name on a plaque next to one of the most important people in the history of the world.

Still cant figure out the point of these half day school outings. Educational? Hmmm not really. The kids have fun? Hmmm not really, we always had someone screaming at us for daring to break away from the line. The place itself wasn’t of any landmark importance that it would make us want to revisit it when we were older.

Just another one of those have to do this once a year, lets get it over with so that the kids can get back to school and continue their quest towards becoming better engineers and accountants.

Funny this post started off a fairly happy one.