BATA celebrated its annual Summer Picnic on June 17, 2007 at Elizabeth Lake/Central Park, Fremont, California. Keeping the tradition of holding summer picnic at the end of local school year, Bay Area Telugu Association (BATA) celebrated its annual Summer Picnic on June 17, 2007 at Elizabeth Lake/Central Park, Fremont, California. It was a perfect weather with bright sun as well as little wind which brought the moisture from the lake front. Approximately 200 adults and kids have attended this event.
The participants started pouring to the event around 11 AM, and the event went all day till 6:30 PM with a variety of traditional Andhra food and fruits 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, vegetables, and corn (mokka jonna kandilu) are prepared well and sufficient for the attendees. Many of the attendees have joined Veeru and and Karun around the grill helping them and watching them. During the short span of time around the grill and in the park, there were several topics people were seems to be chatting, starting from local US politics to Andhra Pradesh politics and cinema news. Examples of topics included recent visit of Dr. Y. S. Rajashekhar Reddy, upcoming visit of Sri. N. Chandrababu Naidu, upcoming TANA conference in Washington, as well as Telangana. It was all a friendly and observatory discussion, it made people joy and homely.
Mrs. Vijaya Aasuri and other cultural volunteers took the incharge of lunch ensuring variety of Andhra food was served. Food included Pongal, Pulihora, Curd Rice, Spinach Dal, Aloo Fry, Rasam, Brinjal Fry, Butter Milk popu, Califlower pachadi, etc. Audience enjoyed the delicious food. Abundance if watermelon and fruit salad was also served.
It was also a special day for fathers as it was a Father’s Day coincidentally. So, during the picnic, there was a surprise cake cutting ceremony for all the fathers. One of the senior dads from the audience was invited to start the cake cutting ceremony, and kids have excitingly participated in this by wishing and feeding the cakes to their dads.
After the Barbeque and delicious lunch, the adults and kids have participated in the games such as Volleyball, Musical chairs, couple’s three-leg race, Tambulla, Lemon in spoon, Tug of war, Frisbee, Pinata and Anthyakshari. Through out the day, younger kids have enjoyed playing in the Bouncing house/Jumper with lots of energy. BATA executive committee presented the prizes to the winners of each of the games. NRI-TDP organizers Suresh, Sathish, Bakta and Ramakrishna came to event with surprising watermelons (pucchakayalu) to all attendees and invited all the participants to Nara Chandrababu Naidu event to be organized at Sunnyvale Hindu Temple on June-29 evening.
The picnic is attended by BATA president Yugandhar Reddy Karakala joined by executive committee members Ravi Thiruveedhula (Vice President), Prasad Mangina (Secretary), Kalyan Kattamuri (Joint Secretary), Srinivas Kolli (Treasurer), Sreedhar Chava (Publicity), Ramesh Konda (Marketing), Vijaya Aasuri (Cultural programs), Srini Mangipudi (Event Coordinator), Satheesh Pola (Webmaster), Ramesh Mandalapu (Advisor), and Veeru Vuppala (Advisor), and many BATA volunteers have actively involved in making this program a grand success. This event also attended by Jayaram Komati (TANA Secretary) and Sathish Chilukuri (TANA Trustee Chairman) among many others Bay Area folks.
Yugandhar Reddy (President of BATA) thanked all the participants, volunteers and executive committee members for making this event successful.
