Close to 300 people attended the 7th Annual Picnic of Friends of Madhya Pradesh New York New Jersey (www.FriendsofMPNYNJ.com) Saturday, September 28, at Rosedale Park in Pennington, New Jersey.
Despite rough weather and rain due to Hurricane Helene impact, organizers and attendees were in high spirits, according to a press release. “Despite morning showers, the Picnic had close to full participation, with many families on the wait-list,” organizers said.
As in previous years, authentic Madhya Pradesh food made on location, and cultural and traditional activities were the highlights of the fun and activity-filled day.
Starting with a breakfast of Indore’s traditional Poha, Jalebi and Saboo Dana Wada, and M.P.’s food delicacy Poori, Shrikhand and Halwa, were served at lunch by the volunteers.
The venue was decorated in colors of ‘National Parks of MP’ with wildlife picture booths and placards. To ensure that first time attendee families were comfortable, the team planned ‘Host- Dost’ program, pairing new attendees with those families who had been part of the organization for some time.
Also, all attendees had name labels which also mentioned the original town or city in MP that they came from. “So lots of past connections of School, Colleges, native towns were found,” organizers said.
Volunteers helped conduct full-day games and other activities for children and seniors, including Antakshari, Musical Masti, Cricket, Little Master Chef, Tambola, and more.
DJ Pi (Vivek Jain) also from MP played popular music. “As soon as he played “Gotilo” people left their rain jackets, umbrellas and started dancing in full abandon,” the press release said. His special sound track created just for this Picnic “Poha Poha” has gone viral after the Picnic launch, according to organizers.
The Indian Consulate and leaders of other community organizations sent their best wishes.
FMPNYNJ has been organizing annual picnic and other events since 2015. Managed totally by volunteers, the organization’s sold-out picnic has become a reunion for people from Madhya Pradesh.
Some of the volunteers who organized and managed the event were families of Jitendra Muchhal, Rajesh Mittal, Raj Bansal, Ajit Jain, Anand Rai, Amit Mishra, Shaman Jain, Akhilesh Laddha, Sanjay Modi, Sarthak Pathak, Kapil Samadiya, Manoj Kulseja, Ashish Vijayvargiya, Nikhil Sharma, Sonal Shukla, Vivek Jain and many other volunteers.
