Page - 1

It was a lazy evening when instead of being on the streets of Ahmedabad on my bike, I was passing my not-so-precious time on dbabble, chatting away to glory. The now-so-familiar beep of a new message on dbabble informed me that the trials for BT Acumen 2007,
India's largest national B-school quiz and debate competition, are going to be held at 10_00 pm in CR 4. To admit honestly, I had never heard of Acumen before, even though I later found out how big the annual event was. But, being ever ready for any extra curriculars (as long as its not a case study competition), and specially one that involved public speaking, my favourite activity, I decided to give it a try. As it is, I didn't have much to do that night except, of course, playing cricket and watching a movie!

So I landed at CR 4, and as expected, there were a bunch of studs of IIM-A, waiting to be a part of the team that was to be selected to represent the institute this year for debate. Glancing around the room, I realized that with such heavy-weights around, I might just be wasting my time there. "But well, now that I am here, I might as well give it my best shot," the words traveled instantly from my brain to the tongue as I saw Maclo stride into the room. Maclo was this McKinsey dude who had never ever debated before in life and came that night with the sole intention of giving me company since I didn't have any partner to go with. It was a team of two that was to be selected and from the 15-16 odd candidates, it was decided that from the 8 teams formed henceforth, only top 2 candidates would be selected irrespective of which team they belonged to.

And so began the trials. Each team of 2 were given a topic and after a minute, one guy spoke for the motion and the other against it. When our turn came, I saw Maclo instantly spring into action, chalking down points that would build our arguments. I never doubted his intellect and sharpness, neither his speaking style. But he had never debated before, and hence, wasn't sure if this is his cup of tea. Anyways, just like me, he didn't have much lined up that night I suppose (Hello! Placecommer with no work... Ha! Ha! Ha!), and hence, he turned up to give me a partner so that at least I could try out. But I always knew that he's a great speaker irrespective of his past debate credentials, and hence, was confident of our chances. We worked well... he gave a lot of inputs on the arguments and I structured all of it an worked the way we needed to present and speak. We spoke well, but so did the other 7 teams!

Next

* Contributed by -
Vinamra Srivastava (Campus Associate),
PGP - 2,
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.