I was all of six and so, so excited. It was my first-ever school picnic, and it was the next day. My parents had paid the small picnic fee, and I was getting to go! I was thrilled that our school buses would drive us all the way from school to Sanjay Gandhi National Park, on the other side of the railway tracks. That was what our teacher, Mrs Balan, had told us when she had announced the picnic a few days earlier.