Drop Outs

Shekhawat takes members to task for letting him down

Many quietly slink away

After a fun-filled session of fooling around, Shekhawat today blew his fuse after the exercises. Fuming with rage, he declared: “Never again shall I organize a picnic. You people keep pestering me for a picnic and back out at the last moment. If I had not paid Rs2000 as advance, I would have cancelled this picnic right now. In future, let anybody organize any picnic. But for me, this is the last picnic.”
The picnic he’s caught up in is scheduled for Saturday, August 22. The date was fixed after much deliberation, taking everyone’s convenience into account and now, with barely three days to go, members are opting out one by one. Someone has a relative admitted in hospital, another has guests arriving unannounced at home, a third has to rush out of town on that very date, a fourth has to attend to an ailing spouse, a fifth wasn’t even aware of the picnic and would require time to think… there is no end to excuses.
“This is grossly unfair,” Banoo Apa said, taking up for Shekhawat. “If you people were not interested in the picnic, why did you bring it up in the first place? What fun do you get in harassing a man? He has made numerous phone calls, negotiated the best rates for you, listened to all kinds of gaalis, been begging for money… all for what? He does not make a personal profit from this. He does it so that you have a good time. And now you want to back out?”
Shekhawat’s problem is that he doesn’t even have the numbers he had estimated and in order to stay within budget, he would have to make renewed efforts at coaxing people to join. “Even if there’s a shortfall, we’ll individually pay 10-20 rupees extra… it hardly makes a difference,” Tara Chand consoled him while signing up. “I had some other program fixed for Saturday, but I will cancel it now.” Mallika Kagzi offered to get her friends on board so as to make up for the drop-outs. “Just tell me how many people you require, I’ll produce them in front of you tomorrow morning,” she assured Shekhawat.
True, the bus shall get filled one way or the other; but whether it would be ‘club’ picnic remains to be seen.