Ashish Mitter reports on the Rev. Samuel Slater Memorial Debate held at the Bishop Cotton School, Shimla

   When you are told that you are taking part in a competition, not to win, but to receive exposure, you can take it in two ways: you can either get demoralized, and question the very purpose of your taking part in the competition, or you can treat it as a unique experience, and try to enjoy yourself as much as you can. We decided on the latter ; although things didn’t go as planned, we still managed to have a great time.
   On April 26, 2006, Uday Pratap Singh, Chetan Agarwal, Akshit Batra and I were escorted by Mr. Aaron Jacob (ANJ) to the Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, to take part in the 11th Rev. Samuel Slater Memorial Debate. After a rather eventful eight-hour journey, thanks to a maniacal driver, who kept us on the edge of our seats due to his dare-devil driving, we arrived at BCS and were escorted to our dorms. Shortly after that, we were divided into pools. Our group consisted of La Martinere Girls’, Lucknow, Sri Ram School, Delhi and the hosts themselves. As the Slater’s Debates are held in a league-cum-knockout format, we were assured of taking part in at least three debates. To our alarm, we were informed that all three of our first round (pre-quarter final) debates were to be held the following day, with the first one against the formidable debaters from La Martinere Girls’. The debates were all held in the Cambridge format. The topic was “Fashion is the pastime of the rich,” and the debate, from our point of view, was a disaster! Instead of reading it as fashion is the pastime…we read it as fashion is a pastime, thereby misinterpreting the entire debate. I suffered a bad bout of stage-fright and found myself inexplicably trembling on stage. We were thoroughly beaten and came out of the debate quite demoralized. Fortunately, though, we had no time to ponder over our performance as our second debate was just a few hours away, against Sri Ram School. The topic was “Man is a social animal,” and we were slated to go against the topic. After some frantic phone calls to DEB, we prepared a rather haphazard debate, going up on stage with just a few relevant points instead of the customary speech. This proved to be a blessing in disguise, as with nothing to look down at, we were forced to look at the audience which eventually gave us more confidence. Akshit’s marvellous use of rhetoric which was to become a trademark of the debates, propelled us to a comfortable victory. Our final topic for the day was, “Witness protection is the responsibility of the state,” and once again we found ourselves pitched against the motion. We went into the debate overconfident and still on a high after our win over Sri Ram, and this, combined with the fact that it was the third debate of the day, resulted in the debate turning into a comedy of errors. Chetan, our lead speaker, realized that he had too much to say, and not enough time to say it. This resulted in his fumbling with his cue-cards. Akshit suffered a rare black-out and was silent for thirty seconds. However, the host team was almost as bad, as they read from their text incoherently and rambled on about their ‘real-life experiences.’ At the close of the first round, Sri Ram, Doon and BCS were tied with one win apiece, while the girls from Lucknow were way ahead, with three wins out of three. After some tension, we were relieved to hear that we had moved into the quarter-final on the basis of the points scored. We were now drawn against Sri Ram. The topic for the quarter-final was “Nothing is bad, only thinking makes it so,” and we were once again drawn against the motion. We went up on stage and won convincingly. We were ecstatic, as none of us could digest the fact that we had reached so far. Later that day, we went to Kufri for a short excursion, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. After that, it was back to the drawing board, as we sat down and brainstormed for our next topic – “Town-planning is a concept which does not exist in India.” We were pitted against Mayo Girls’, and for once we felt that the topic was tilted in our favour. We were against the motion (for the fifth consecutive time), and managed to prepare quite a strong debate. Akshit impressed everyone once again with his masterful oratory and Chetan had us all in splits when we rose to defend the prestige of Dehradun when one of the girls talked about the chaos prevalent in ‘Suicide Alley.’ Before we knew it, we were through to the finals. It was all set to be a fairy tale ending, but the team from St. James’, Kolkata showed us that all fairy tales need not have a perfect ending. They were cool, calculated and clinically efficient as they systematically demolished our arguments in the finals, the topic being the vague “India has arrived.”
   Through the debates, Akshit collected three best speaker, one second best speaker and one third best speaker award. I won two second best speaker awards, while Chetan won a third best speaker along with Uday. Despite our loss in the finals, I shall never forget the trip as a whole. I shall never forget how Akshit swept the floor at the jam session and how Mr. Cecil, the escort from St. James’, kept us amused with his prim and ‘propah’ behaviour. The hospitality shown by the BCS boys more than made up for the food while their chapel service was a unique and moving experience. The trip, as they say, was the stuff dreams are made of.