Today, Peanut (my wife) and I went to a popular park to relax and enjoy our Sunday. However, my main motive was to be in a calm and natural environment so I could get a creativity boost and finish writing a book review. Peanut prepared daal-rice–daal chaawal in Hindi–for lunch, along with a banana shake. Everything was well managed, and I was hoping for some productive time.

We reached the park around 2:00 PM, and it was, as I expected, full of people. There were many families with kids, who were relaxing, playing cards, badminton and frisbee. The kids were riding around on their pedal-less bicycles. There were several large groups of youngsters who were chilling, drinking and playing music on guitars. Some people even brought their pets–mostly dogs–who were also enjoying the nice sunny weather, either by chasing each other or sniffing foods and female dogs 😅. Lastly there were couples, like us, who were not making much noise but just sitting there, calmly chatting or napping. So everyone seemed to be enjoying the beautiful, sunny spring weekend.

Among this peaceful chaos, we sat down and I started working on the review. I tried hard to come up with words but everytime there was something happening around. For example a mother was yelling (with love) at her kid not to go too far, a crow came and snatched a piece of potato chips, and two tiny female dogs were running around and getting the attention of almost everyone. I also enjoyed these scenes along with trees dancing in the wind and flying birds. But I could not come up with a single word.

At last, around 4:00 PM, I gave up and asked Peanut whether she wanted to go home. We both agreed that we were tired (or relaxed?) so we packed our belongings and started heading home. As we went a bit away from the park, I realized that the lack of noise gave a great relief to my ears. I confirmed my realization with Peanut and indeed we both were feeling the same.

The park adventure of ours turned out to be everything but peaceful. So from next time, I will be more careful about choosing a public place. The common convention of spending peaceful time in a park seems completely wrong to me. Public parks are full of chaos and stimulation, which not everyone enjoys.