All India Inter University Shooting Competition

Ishaan Banerji, Class of 2019

Our team consisted of Rajyavardhan Singh, Jonathan Fernandes, Rahul Menon and me, Divij Singh, on Men’s Rifles. Vidur Singh, Shreshth Budhiraja and Sanchit Goel were on Men’s Pistols. Trisha Mukherjee, Vatsala Peshawaria were on Women’s Rifles, and Kriti Jain was on Women’s Pistol, and last but not least, Kashika Gokhale, on both Women’s Rifle and Pistol (one in each hand, think Rambo).

Now, let’s go over the technical details. So here’s the basics. We had a few matches per day, going from the 10th of November to the 14th. Men fired 60 shots, women 40, and our rifles and pistols used compressed air to fire the pellets, over a distance of ten metres. Considering that most of us had practiced for maybe a month and a half, we did quite well. Trisha of course was the star, scoring a 397/400 in her match, and coming third in her category.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the real stuff. The food. A word of caution, Amritsari food has a lot of love. By love, I of course mean butter. As though further proof were needed, literally the first place we ate was called Makhan Fish and Chicken. Delicious butter chicken and naans, would endanger cholesterol again (in fact we did, having gone back once more before leaving). Near the Golden Temple we visited Bharawan da Dhaba, where we ate some shahi paneer and dal makhni, yet again with naans (correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there’s a pattern). Many of us ate excellent stuffed kulchas at the appropriately named Kulcha Land. We rounded out the meal locations with a few other places, including the host college’s canteen (Guru Nanak Dev University, Arts Cafe), and pizza from Dominos and subs from Subway (don’t you call me names, we were tired).

So, all in all, a good time courtesy an interesting shooting tournament and some brilliant food. To close this out, a great traveling tip for Amritsar: just add ‘ji’ whenever addressing someone, and they’ll think you’re a local.