Bay Area Telugu Association (BATA) celebrated its annual Summer Picnic on June 14, 2008 at Elizabeth Lake/Central Park, Fremont, California. It was a perfect weather with bright sun as well as little wind, which brought the mist from the lakefront. The picnic area in the Central Park had lot of shaded area as well as sunny area. Approximately 250 adults, kids, parents with toddlers, and elders have attended this event. Some of the participants brought chairs and blankets with them to the picnic and had a nice and relaxing time under the trees and sun through out the picnic time. The attendees included Sri. Jayaram Komati (President Elect of TANA), BATA Executive Committee Members, BATA members, Volunteers, well-wishers, and many local community leaders.

      The event started around 11 AM, and went all day till 7:30 PM with a variety of traditional Andhra food and a lot of exciting activities for kids, youth and adults. Veeru Uppala and Karun Veligeti took in-charge of Barbeque grills ensuring the chicken and corn (mokka jonna kandilu) are prepared well and sufficient for the attendees. Many of the attendees (Ravi, Prasad, Kolli, Kiran, Yugandhar, Srini, etc.) have joined Veeru and and Karun around the grill helping them. Folks around grill took it as a great opportunity for social conversation on current topics from movies, politics, to upcoming elections in Andhra Pradesh and USA.

      Mrs. Vijaya Aasuri took in-charge of lunch ensuring variety of Andhra food was served. Food included Pulihora, Biryani, Rice, Mango Dal, Sambar, Aloo Fry, Brinjal Fry, and Paayasam. Audience enjoyed the delicious food. Sudha, Srini, Veeru, Karun, Srilu, Jhansi, Swathi, Rajesh, Sridevi, Sirisha, Krishna Priya, Syamala and others have joined Vijaya in preparing the variety of food. One of the attractions of the food items this year was pakodi and alu bajjis were prepared on the spot in the picnic. Many of the women participants have joined this instantaneous cooking activity, and felt like they were home preparing the food for their family and guests. It was a very informal, and family like get together with a large number of participants compared to previous years. Another attraction of the picnic was serving the traditional spicy Maramaralu mixture (Muntha Kindha Pappu). One could see the participants excitement and queue at these special attraction food as these are not routinely made at home. Also, there were people around the grill for barbequed chicken and grilled corn through out the day. There were many picnic activities through out the day that groups of participants were scattered around at the food as well as at other sports/entertainment activities..

      After the Barbeque and delicious lunch, the adults and kids have participated in the games such as Volleyball, Kho-Kho, Musical chairs, Three-legged race, Lemon in spoon, Tug of war, Frisbee, and Pinata, etc. There were so many people interested in the games that people had to line up for their turn at each of the activity. It was really amazing to see the excitement and common interest among the folks at one gathering such as this. Amazingly one could not have walked-by without noticing the high number of audience cheering at each of these activities. Three-legged race was a fun event, which brought most of the attendees at one place to watch the women players coordinating with their partner participants in a running race to reach the target. In this game two players form a team in which one leg of each player is tied together to make it one. So, during the game each team had total three legs together. To be successful, this game required a lot of teamwork and coordination between among the team. Another attractive game for all age groups was musical chairs. Each time a specific age group of players were introduced to the game. There were a lot of cheers from the audience for all age groups when players were trying to find the chairs at each round. Then the kho-kho game was organized in which several women players have actively took part. Each age group took their turn to participate and enjoy the game. Most attraction was paid to Tug-of-war game. In this game, at first go around, the kids have played during which some of the parents could not resist pulling the rope in support of their kids…well as this was informal, no one took a big notice of this but the audience knew which group was the stronger! Then came the Tug-of-war for ladies. One could notice competitive spirit among the participants and lot of cheering and encouragement and photo snaps from the audience and spouses and friends. Finally, the Tug-of-war came down to men participants turn in which majority of the well-known people along with Sri. Jayaram Komati (President Elect, TANA) participated. Several rounds of this game resulted in unbalanced team strength and the teams wanted rematch after rematch. The referee (Vijaya and Jay) had to count the participants on each side to ensure the equal strength. There was so much excitement that each side ended up more than 25 players. It was a friendly and entertaining event that brought all levels of participants together.

      It was also a special day for fathers, as it was eve of Father’s Day. Towards the end of picnic, there was a surprise cake cutting ceremony for all the fathers. All the fathers who were at the picnic have cut the cake, and kids have excitingly participated in this by wishing and feeding the cake to their dads. Abundance of watermelon and ice cream was also served at the event..

     Through out the day, younger kids have enjoyed playing in the Bouncing house/Jumper with lots of energy. Towards the end, there was pinata for kids. All the kids were looking forward for this as they knew that they could get surprise candies, presents, & chocolates, etc from pinata. This event brought all the energy back for the kids and they had fun in finding/collecting the cadies as they broke piñata after several attempts. Parents cheered their kids all along encouraging them to break the panata.

     A lot of hard work and planning went in behind the scenes by BATA committee and volunteers in making arrangement for this picnic such as buying the required food items, utensils, game items, species, serving items, etc, and transporting these to the picnic place. Several volunteers came forward and took care of different assigned tasks to make it a great event. BATA executive committee Ravi Thiruveedhula, Prasad Mangina, Srilu Veligeti, Srinivas Kolli, Srini Mangipudi, Ramesh Konda, Vijaya Aasuri, Kamesh Malla, Sireesha Battula, Venkat Malladi, Karun Veligeti, and Veeru Vuppala thanked the BATA volunteers and attendees for making this event a grand success.