Happy Street

Couple of weeks back, one of my colleagues told me about the recent event happening in Pune on every Sunday - Happy Street. At first it looked odd to me - people flocking the venue at 7 AM for no specific agenda, that too on a Sunday morning!! But then he showed me some of the photographs he had taken there and a video clip where two youngsters were showing off their football skills. I decided to take Meghana and Mrunmay to Happy Street and witness the event myself.

For initial 3-4 weeks the event was held at Aundh and from last weekend (21-Feb) it is being held at Kalyaninagar, opposite AdLabs. The concept is very simple. An area gets demarcated as "Happy Street" and gets closed for all automobiles. Only pedestrians and cyclists are allowed in that zone. Then the organizers setup some events and are then joined by some other enthusiasts to setup activities meant to engage people.

When we reached there on Sunday morning, people had started dropping by. Some had borrowed the cycles from organizers and had started going round the street. Some gym enthusiasts had setup a quick warm up setup and people were simply joining in for couple of rounds and moving forward. Some leg exercises, followed by hopping and jumping. As we moved forward, we visited couple of stalls - one regarding how to make compost at home, another by life saver society. Just next to that there was another group who were offering skipping rope for those who wanted to try their hands on. I couldn't resist myself! I quickly completed two sets of 50 each. Felt good. 

We had started hearing some fast songs and realized that there's a stage setup further down the road and another team was making people dance on the tune of various songs. We started walking towards the stage and realized that there were at least 200+ souls dancing to the tune of songs. A team of girls was showing the steps from the stage and the group was simply trying to follow them without any inhibition. Mrunmay and Meghana decided to join in the moves, I parked myself on the divider to catch a better view.

After a while, we walked past the stage to check out what else was there. It felt like pretty much end of the happy street. Mrunmay wanted to do the hopping and jumping once again so we decided to head back to that spot. To our surprise that patch that we had crossed few minutes back, which wasn't that crowded, was now fully crowded. There was another group who had setup one minute activity - "passing the ball". Mrunmay and I joined the game and everyone was simply amazed with the speed with which we could do that.

And then we found tug of war!!

In between, we also played frisbee. Meghana gave a try to Hula Hoop. By this time, it was close to 9:30 And we decided to break away from this event of Happy Street... Big boy carrying a big smile on his face!!