3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 2

This is Chapter 2 of the series, scroll down to the next post if you're looking for Chapter 1...

continued....

[The cab that took us to our accommodation had a weird set of headlights. More accurately, there were flashlights attached to the front where the headlights should have been, three on one side and two on the other]

The next two days saw us competing fiercely for the elusive break. We made constructives, refuted arguments, cross questioned aggressively, made closings, did everything in our power to win each of our debates. Each team had five debates before the break, one on one with another team. The top eight teams went through. If one achieved a score of four wins versus one loss (4-1) it was mathematically impossible to not qualify and we were targeting that at least. At a score of 3-2 however, qualifying would be difficult since a large number of teams typically tie at that score and then the ones with the highest speaking scores go through. Not more than one or two 3-2 teams can make it, mathematically.

The first day ended in mishap after we lost our second debate. That left us at 1-1, meaning we would have to win all three debates the next day to qualify. Towards evening, I began to notice a peculiar something about my teammate Shobhit. He seemed to be hanging around one particular adjudicator quite a lot. She adjudicated our first debate and I thought she was reasonably good. However, when she was reassigned to us for the second debate, I wanted to call in an objection because I thought we could do better. Shobhit however was vehemently in favour of having her judge us. I tried convincing him that in a close match she may not be the most rational adjudicator around and that she seemed to construe arguments to her own liking. He would hear nothing of it though and kept insisting that she was the “right person for us”. I dropped it then because clearly, his belief in her far overshadowed my skepticism of her talents.

[We witnessed a bar-fight that night, three guys teamed up and beat two others. It wasn’t fair, it was three on two]

All through the next day, Shobhit seemed to be spending an extraordinary amount of time with the adjudicator girl. I would sneak close by in the hope of catching juicy bits of what I was certain was a debate fling. However, each time I would hear nothing but detailed discussions of arguments, their rebuttals, case statements etc. To say that the rest of us were completely puzzled would be an understatement. I mean, this was Shobhit, and the last thing he spoke to random women about was debating. Sure, he hit on them regularly, flirted incessantly and tried to “pick them up”. I’m also sure he regarded doing well at debates as a way to further his cause with the ladies. But discuss cases with them? Not in living memory. This was a first, by far.

We won debate number three next morning but tragedy struck in the fourth round. A head-adjudicator took forty five minutes to come to the most abhorably abysmal decision in debating history. He ruled against us citing numerous points, all of which had never been mentioned in the debate. Badly stung, we complained about him later, only to find out that he had been admitted to the hospital almost immediately after speaking to us. At any rate, that left us at a pathetic 2-2 with little or no hope of qualifying. Beaten and demoralized, we entered our fifth debate to find Shobhit’s adjudicator woman waiting for us.

The next hour we spent angrily contesting the idea that pre-marital sex was bad for Indian women. In debating, as in any sport, the result of the previous round often influences one's performance in the next. Thanks to the fiasco in round four, we were inclined to be just a little vindictive in the fifth. Through the course of the debate, we did a lot more than present arguments. We mocked the opposition's claims, we ridiculed their points, we ridiculed them, we made a mockery of anything and everything they'd said. Shobhit spent some four minutes out of his seven joking about how foolish it was to claim that contraception may not work. I dedicated my entire closing to how the opposition's style of debating represented a crafty expertise in the art of digging one's own grave. To summarize, we managed to ruin their evening quite completely. Towards the end of the round, we knew we’d won, but we also knew that we were out of the competition. 3-2 wasn’t going to cut it, especially since one of our victories had been a split decision. So we accepted defeat, Shobhit took refuge in his cigarettes, Suddu began to sulk (his team was also at 3-2) and I began planning to lift the team’s spirits with a little spirit.

After a somewhat morose dinner, the breaking teams were announced. We couldn't get ourselves to seem very interested and clapped along politely as every team was announced from the first position downwards. Little did we know that as we looked on uninterestedly and waited for the formalities to end so we could get out of there, our lives were about to change forever.

At eighth position, the last of the breaking teams, the only team to get through with 3-2, all the way from Mumbai, was us. We broke, for the first time ever. We broke. To everyone else it was nothing, to us it was a historic moment. We broke. More than a year after the formation of our debating society, we broke. All the effort, the travelling, the night-long practice sessions, the unending research, the case making workshops, the daydreaming, it all suddenly seemed worth it. We broke!! We stood around in a stunned kind of silence, disbelieving. Shobhit said later that night, “It’s a funny feeling, getting what you’ve wanted for so long, it’s a funny feeling.” For my part, for once I was at a loss for words.

But we broke.

Of course, we still had no idea how it had happened. There was no way our speaker scores could have been high enough, and numerous teams must have tied at 3-2 for sure. We took a look at the tabs to see what had really happened.

Turned out our speaker scores were high, very high. So high that though we’d qualified at eighth position, our speaker scores were at position four. This was largely due to three of our debates. The simple minded may conclude that these were debates where we did well, and scored well. To the even slightly more conspiratorial mind, however, the presence of “Shobhit’s adjudicator girl” at each of these debates would seem like more than just a mere coincidence. At any rate, we were through!

[We had a hard time leaving the dinner venue because there were five dogs blocking the entrance, three black and two white. This was the signoff in the 3-2 messages, I assumed.]

After the initial jubilation, we headed out for what would soon be a memorable night on the streets of Delhi. After the guys had had enough to drink at some place called “Blues” in Connaught Place and were significantly loosened up (except Suddu who was only sulkier after the drinks, if anything. His team hadn’t gone through), we headed out to cover the trademark Delhi-trip-sites. Just like no trip to Germany is complete without a Münchener beer-garden, no debating trip to Delhi is complete without a celebratory walk amidst the high houses of Indian democracy at Rajpath. We do this every time, to breathe in the freedom that comes with being an Indian and to experience firsthand most of what we debate about. We go from the Rashtrapati Bhawan at one end to the India Gate at the other. It’s something else, walking in the shadow of the parliament, intoxicated by liberty and inebriated by alcohol.

Some of us, of course, take this freedom a little too seriously, as the story will show.

To be continued...