Anecdote #47

Let’s Punt!

Cambridge apart from it’s academic excellence is famous for one more thing that is, Punting. It is essentially the same as rowing. To define it in exact terms, punting consists of a long, narrow boat with a flat bottom and square edges and it is moved by a person standing at one end who pushes the bottom of the river with a pole. At first I when I observed others doing this I felt that it would be very simple but I was proven wrong. 

There were two main templates available. Either you do it yourself or you get a professional punter and enjoy the enchanting scenery surrounding River Cam. Naturally we were students hence we were not awarded this luxury. There were five of us in that boat and we took turns at the activity. As all my class mates were able to do it, though with some difficulty, I was very confident that I would be able to pull it off too. I climbed on to the elevated portion and pushed the pole into the shallow bed of Cam. As soon as I pulled it out the boat began to shake. Screams erupted and the boat could have turned upside down. Everyone urged me to step down but my overconfidence was undeterred, I assured everyone that it would be fine and kept at it. 

Ironically and not so ironically in I caused an accident and the boat crashed into a tree that had submerged into the water. The branches of the tree and the filthy leaves engulfed the boat. With great difficulty we emerged out like nomads from a cave pulling away the branches from our faces. We thought that the calamity was but the damages became more severe.While I was thanking my stars that I didn’t wash my hair that very day, Robin, a Dutch boy from my class had taken pictures of the entire fiasco. He told me that the pictures would be on Facebook, I retorted by saying that I wasn’t on it. Wittily he replied by saying, now I would be.

Whatever said and done the entire experience was extremely memorable. From being too scared to sit in the boat to crashing it, I had evolved plenty in that very short period of time. 

Later in the evening when I sat down on the dinner table with all the other people from India we began sharing our anecdotes from the day. As they were studying Business their slot for punting was different from mine. Urmeen and Manmeen interacted with me properly for the first time that day. Before that we had only exchanged pleasantries. 

Manmeen shared that they had gotten one guy from their class to punt for two hours. The docile fellow was too shy to say anything and his hands were brick red by the end of it. The humorous incident left us in splits. Laughter is contagious and when I start laughing I usually go on for at least an hour. Jokes start oozing out of me like I was born to crack jokes. I am very critical of people’s sense of humour (not really, Kapil is my only benchmark) and I felt that both the sisters were on the same wave length as I was.

One thing led to the other and we began chatting about Kabir Singh and simultaneously about a Chinese couple in their class where the boyfriend carried the girl’s handbag all the time. Spontaneously I said so he was more befitting as Preeti and the girl was his Kabir Singh. That made no one else on the table but the three of us hysterical. We just could not stop laughing.

The connection had been made and sealed. Consequentially, there was an evening talk that day where we sat next to each other. Every time we glanced at each other, we ended up in splits uncontrollably. It was comforting to be at ease with people and I could not care less about embarrassment.

The humour and laughter proved to be the best medicine that night and I slept comparatively better. I was more at home now and while I lay in bed I could only look forward to meeting my new friends the next day.