One fine morning, some of us from the European Standard School Debate Club were sitting in a vacant classroom just “adda-fying”, and it was Faria who said something about her cousin being the manager of an organization called Higher-Edge, and about having talked to her about some sort of sponsorship. If you know me even a bit, you’d know why the details are so shaky (for those who do NOT know me, my memory sucks!). Somehow, we started discussing past achievements of ESSDC and we came to realize that hosting an inter-school debate tournament would put ESS in a different league compared to many other schools in the debating arena. The idea appealed to us, and we all agreed that we WOULD host this tournament. Gradually, we had some people involved who would later form the “Organizing Committee”, or the OrgCom if you will. Five of us, Hasan, Faria, Afrida, Mushfiq & myself, all students of class XII, started brainstorming about how this tournament will take shape. Firstly, we discussed our ambitions with Ranadev sir, one of the directors of ESS, who usually took care of our needs. With his green signal, we started putting our thoughts on paper…
Rather than describing the preparation and the other details of the debate championship in an objective way, in this write-up I will focus mainly on my experiences throughout the time-span. Firstly, let me say here that intentions for joining ESSDC were all related to debate. So, at first, when the idea of the competition was conceived, my stand was clear. I would remain involved with the organization of this tournament, and then when the tournament starts, I would participate as a debater. Anyway, as I mentioned before, the five of us were talking over different things that we would need to do to organize this tournament. Let me also add here that we had no adult intervention in this. Whatever was there to be done was done by us, and only us. The first part was making a budget for the program. We gathered all the possible expenditure that we would need to make, and listed them. They amounted to Tk. 54,000. With that budget plan, we approached our potential sponsor, Higher-Edge, courtesy of Faria’s broad contact span. After talking over the program a few times, and going to Gulshan in some amazingly disastrous trips (one time during the month of Ramadan we had to break our fast in the street while being out and searching for buses, CNGs, or anything, rather, for a couple of hours, all the while constantly listening to Faria’s ‘ghan-ghan’ of “How much more do you expect me to walk!&rdquo, we finally managed to secure a deal where Higher-Edge would pay us 60% of the budget in advance and another 20% later on, while the other 20% will be paid by the school. Now that the money problems were solved, we started spending away, not only on stuff like posters & venues, but also on daily fancy CNG fares and Dominous Pizza bills!
At this point, let me warn you, you will probably find a lot of loopholes related to time and sequence in the following events and experiences. But please, just overlook them (and pardon me) because I could not get the whole sequence of events correctly on paper if I tried for a hundred years! Now I’ve warned you, I’ll go on.
For the debate tournament, we talked to Higher-Edge and fixed up a suitable name. Naïve as we were, we settled for the cumbersome name of “Higher-Edge–ESSDC Debate Championship 2007”. Higher-Edge gave us a few stipulations and conditions that we must abide by, and again, we acquiesced. Then we got to working. We wanted to do something different from the beginning. So, we decided that we would have a unique theme for the tournament, something more spicy than the usual democracy, poverty, corruption and blah blah blah! After much contemplation and discussion, we settled for “Teens 21st”, reflecting contemporary issues related to drug abuse, student politics, etc. which would allow the debaters to talk more from their own perspective, something that they are not usually able to do frequently. Another one of our major concerns was the whole deal with the invitations to be sent to schools. So, we got a very nicely laid-out invitation letter printed for each of the schools that were in our list and contemplated how we could send the invitations. After putting in a great deal of thought, we decided that we had no other choice but to invite them the hard way, i.e. going to their school buildings and talking to a responsible someone from their debate club, because we knew how information transmission systems in schools could be, of course from the first-hand experience gained at ESS! But we realized that we would like to set up posters in different schools as well, and this can only be done while dropping off the invitation letters. With schools opening after the Eid vacation, and the date of our championship approaching as well, we knew we had to invite the schools fast. So, the result was that we suddenly found ourselves with an inescapable need of getting posters printed within a few days! And of course! At such a time, who else would step in? So, Hasan and I found ourselves in Nilkhet one not-so-fine morning looking for good deals for printing posters and certificates.
Yes, now for the story of my life! We went to one of the many, many printing houses & presses all around us and made a deal that sounded fair enough to us (naïve, how so naïve!). Then we started our work of designing the posters and certificates. Looking back, now I know that what screwed us up real bad was the efficiency (or rather, inefficiency) of the dude who was operating the computer. But neither of us being any graphics designing expert, we understood it far too late! So, we kept on instructing him and he kept on working, on and on, on and on. At some point, we realized it was getting dark! But even then, our designs were far from over. So, we kept on instructing him and again he kept on working, droning on monotonously. Finally, by the time we finished the designs, it was 10:30 in the night! Yes, we had been in Nilkhet for more than 12 hours straight! Now that’s something to tell my grandchildren!
The posters were to be printed by the morning after the next day. So, on the delivery day, I went to pick up the posters and the certificates from that shop, without doubt very enthusiastic about how the fruit of my exhaustive designing experience (my first ever) came out. Seeing the stack of freshly printed posters from the side, I held my breath in apprehension, preparing to be amazed. I took up one of the posters and placed it before my eyes. Wow! Such beauty! The background of black from the top right corner fading into white at the bottom left, the watermarks at various places in the poster, the yellow writing in black background… ALL SUCK! The black was more white than black, which meant the yellow writing came out under a whitish background, making it nearly illegible from a meter’s distance, and the poster was strewn with irregular spots. Firstly, I thought the spots were the fault of one particular poster, but then I picked up some other ones and they also had the same spots! And also another teensy little problem. At the place where there was supposed to be a silhouetted picture, THERE’S NOTHING! Yes, that’s what you get when you order posters from Nilkhet! (DON’T BLAME THE DESIGN; IT WAS GREAT!)
People who call me a calm and composed guy should have seen me then! I went berserk at the printers. They called their boss, whom I clearly told that I wouldn’t be paying for these. He assured me in the most polite voice that the picture that did not come up in print is not that big a deal. He could get it printed in around an hour. Not willing to trust his word again, I oversaw the printing work while I notified the others about my status. After all the posters got printed and cut, I bundled them up and started for school, where classes were going on which I had had to miss. On the way back, I received a call from an unknown number. On receiving it, I heard an authoritative voice telling me to come to school. Dumbfounded, I complied.
On reaching school, I immediately understood something was wrong. The air was still; not a single leaf bristled. A few people were standing here and there, much too quietly. The mighty Professor Nurul Islam, principal of ESS, was standing in front of the Administration room, looking daggers at every hair that moved. I, as nonchalant as I am, strode in without a concern in the world with my bunch of posters and asked “Admin Miss” to hold on to them for a while. I was going to go inside, when PNI sir called me from the back. Having been expecting it, I turned.
Now this, me fellow readers, is the part where I am dying to tell you about the famous, courageous battle of words I fought with my dear Principal. But since that is irrelevant to this article, I very sadly have to skip it. Just know this, that in order to organize this debate championship, not only did we not get significant assistance from the ESS management, but we had to fight the bureaucracy as well!
But despite all the barriers, our work was progressing. Various sorts of work, not least of them was sending the invitations to schools. Even though, schools were going on, we discovered that we had no other choice but to set off in different directions in groups, all the while skipping classes, and go to the schools one by one and talk to someone from the debate club who is responsible enough to make sure that the school sends teams to the competition. Sounds easy, right? WRONG! You can never predict all the things that could happen when you go to a school to drop off an invitation for a debate tournament. Potential problems include:
1. Getting to the schools was a huge load of trouble. Traffic congestions, ambiguous addresses, apparently non-existent schools (to locals), you name it! And wholeDhaka city is covered with schools, which meant that we took about a week to just get to all the schools!
2. On reaching, first you have to wait to see the administration/reception, then you must wait further after they tell you that they would try to find someone from the debate club (in some cases, they may tell you they don’t have a debate club, in a very confounded voice), then they could ask you weird and irrelevant questions about the tournament whose answers nobody would have thought to put into the invitation.
3. You would almost certainly not be allowed to put up the posters unless you are willing to spend another hour. So, we had to leave a few posters with the admin most of the time.
4. And of course, these would all happen after you have been redirected to two other campuses from the first one you approached!
Somehow, we were all alive after the invitations were done. It was time to fix all the details. The guests and media partners were confirmed. Of course we had to run after them too with invitations and wait decades for confirmation. The auditorium (Russian Cultural Centre) that was booked from beforehand was hired, paying a thinner sum, courtesy of Ranadev sir. Sound system and lights were ordered as well, courtesy of Mushfiq’s contacts this time. Food was finalized. It was up to me to finalize the food items. And I am proud to say that I made good use of the money from the sponsor that was with me to taste and select the best there was! Selecting food, now that’s a job I’ll be glad to do anytime! So, food orders were placed and the rest of the money was taken from Higher-Edge as the competition drew near. The trophy for the Champions and the Runners-up was ordered as well. Meanwhile, I had a brilliant idea. A firm believer in doing things differently from others, I wanted this tournament to be something which debaters would remember. So, I made a logical calculation and found out how much soft drinks the average participant would drink in two days. I assumed a mean of 5 glasses in two days, because some would drink less than 5, and some more. The calculations revealed an expenditure that could be accommodated in the budget. So, I proposed my idea to the others, which was that we would give unlimited drinks to all the participants. They liked my idea as well, and so I selected a “coke-man” (you know, those who walk around with the vans/trolleys and supply soft-drinks), who, to my disliking did not reduce the cost per glass from 15. But even so, to create a positive impact in the minds of the participants, I acceded to the unfair deal.
Meanwhile, we weren’t getting teams. At only 16, the trivial target quota of teams began to look more like an insurmountable peak. That called for one of the most humiliating things that we had had to do for this competition. We figured that it was completely our drive to make this tournament a good success (the fact that this was the very first tournament to be hosted by ESS wasn’t helping). So, we had to set off for the schools again, this time with registration forms and event schedules and other relevant documents, so that we could get the schools to register teams from their own campus. Even then, we had difficulty getting them to commit. And they would often treat us like we were petty runners or ignorant volunteers (again, the fact that I wasn’t a known face in the debating arena yet wasn’t helping!) but we would have to keep a smiling face because we just NEEDED them to register their friggin’ teams! Another problem that hindered our progress was the unfortunate overlap of a couple of University tournaments with our own, where apparently A’ level teams also participated. But at last, and by that I mean at the very last day the tournament was supposed to begin, the total team quota was fulfilled!
The last two days before the competition, I barely got to return home. Naïve as we were, we could not plan everything efficiently. So, things sprouted up in the last minute. We do not have tissue papers and disposable glasses, the badges for organizers and volunteers have not been made, there are no water filters in the building, there aren’t enough chairs either, and what not! Meanwhile, Faria and Afrida threw tantrums saying that their ‘post’ in ESSDC must go on the badges, just a simple “Organizer” wouldn’t do! With Faria’s frequent trademark of “I’m the president, give me some respect!” driving me crazy, I was aghast, but still adamant. And for other reasons as well. I was making a Power-point presentation for the closing ceremony (working with Shoeb Md. Moniruzzaman) which would sum up the competition and also announce the winner. They insisted that they would give “background commentary” to the presentation! My, such creativity!
On the night before, we rolled up our sleeves along with our trusty volunteers and worked at the venue (the ESS building at 7 no. Dhanmondi) to arrange the chairs and tables for the debates which were ordered from a decorator at the eleventh hour. But before that, we had to clear off infinite tiny, miniscule, wooden chairs (which were surprisingly heavy) from each of the rooms (because this ESS building is the kids section). Strenuous work, definitely, and now that I look back at it, I realize that the female volunteers had put in immense physical effort and sheer dedication, more than some of the male ones who were evading the exertion, to get the work done in time. If I have not before, I thank them now for that, and all the other volunteers too, for that matter.
The day loomed in. We were all tense. Getting the final pieces in place, we were all set for the opening ceremony at Russian Cultural Centre. We had emphasized on punctuality in the event schedule, and we were getting apprehensive about the participants’ response. But as soon as the desk at the entrance was set up, the debaters started pouring in. So many arrived so fast, that we were taken totally aback. Some teams had only given oral confirmation and had not paid the registration fee yet, and so we set up a registration desk for them. Soon, the opening ceremony was under way. After a few speeches from sponsors and directors and such, it was my turn to announce the topic for the 1st round debates. The topic was, “Teenagers are the sole cause for the spread of yabba”. At the time, I had very humble debating experience, and definitely not any experience of speaking in front of a crowd of more than 5 people! So, when I got up on the stage, I had crazy butterflies fluttering in my stomach and my knees were experiencing an earthquake scaled 8.0. Somehow, I managed to squeak out the topic and then assigned a volunteer to each team who would take that team to the adjacent ESS building, where the first two rounds of debate were to take place. After all the teams were sent, we wrapped up everything from RCC and moved all of our battalions to the battlefield.
Once we reached there, it was time for some frantic running around and checking if everything is alright in each of the 8 rooms where the debates would take place. I do not remember much about what exactly I was so busy with, but I can definitely recall a certain incident. While I was running towards the back of the building, I noticed Mahnaz Apu (she was the first ever president of ESSDC and helped us a lot with organizing the tournament, mostly in bringing and managing the adjudicators) engaged in a loud conversation with an unfamiliar guy. I approached to check what the fuss was all about. What I learned did not please me at all. The “guy” was actually the debate coach forOxford , and he argued that he would help the Oxford Oxford
The debates started on time. Having gone to a couple of debate competitions as spectator, I knew about the state of punctuality and proper order in the debating arena. So, I had insisted and emphasized from the beginning that our tournament must not run a single minute late (well, let’s say must not run more than 5 to 10 minutes late!). As the debates started, many of the organizers and volunteers went into rooms to watch the debates of their favorite teams and support them. I, however, stayed outside of my own volition, not willing to let anything go wrong. Plus, I had the evening refreshments to be concerned about. I sent a couple of volunteers to bring the food. After running a few more errands, the debates ended and it was time to distribute the snacks. That went well enough, and to my delight, everyone more or less liked the food (a chicken burger and a sweet called balushai). Afterwards, the 2nd round of debates started, and the day finished off with the declaration of the teams which had survived after the 2nd round of debates and the schedule for the debates the next day. As I had anticipated, the “unlimited-coke” idea was quite a hit. But there was one tiny problem. People were having too damn much of soft-drinks compared to what I had anticipated! But after such a strenuous day, I was more willing to get home than ponder over the budget.
The next day was even tougher. After going to bed at 1 at night, I had to wake up before 6 at dawn. Having two slices of bread, I set off for the school building, where everything had to be set up before the teams arrived at the specified time. Again the same work: different problems sprouting up from all directions, the presentation requiring completion, bringing the lunch, etc. Time flew like the wind. Soon, we were nearing the end of the Semifinals and lunch was provided to the participants. We, the organizers, were not so lucky. Although it felt bad, we even had to keep many volunteers go hungry for quite a while, because there was just too much work to be done. I remember a really scary moment which followed right after lunch-time. I was at the school building, when I suddenly received a call from Hasan (or Murtaza, I’m not sure) telling me frantically, “The guests have arrived and there is nobody at Russian Cultural Centre to greet them!” And why? Because our honorable president Faria and our very own Afrida had gone to Faria’s house to change into/out of (again, I don’t remember) sarees, for what was probably the third time! Thankfully, Hasan had reached RCC on time to greet the guests. So, everything went well enough and we were soon all set for the Finals. I had been very enthusiastic to watch the Finals but unfortunately I had to go without witnessing any of the debates because I was busy finishing the presentation at the school building. The others who were not as unlucky as me said the debates of the day that took place on stage were all quite enjoyable. Sucks to be a perfectionist!
Before the grand closing ceremony began, I was confronted by a few challenging problems. Firstly, the trophy for the Champions had some spots where the ink was botched up (I know what you are thinking, “WHY was there ink in the first place?” But again, that’s something that could happen when you are ordering a trophy for the first time). Faria was supposed to have corrected the trophy by applying some watercolor that she had, but unfortunately for me, she had forgotten, and I had to do it myself. Secondly, I found unsigned certificates gaping at me, and again, unfortunately, Faria had forgotten/neglected to sign them beforehand, and so I was forced to call her up and shout at her to get it done ASAP, because the ink from gel-pens took a while to set in. After all these problems were taken care of, the certificates had to be sorted in a specific order so that they could be presented to the participants in the closing ceremony by the chief guest. I got some of the volunteers to order the certificates, which I am quite confident was done correctly. Also, I and Shoeb finished the presentation, and added in the name of the Champion team, which had been revealed to us by the adjudicators. The closing ceremony was now all set to commence!
Afrida, our all time great host, was obviously the host for the program as well. Then, again the speeches. This time, each of the guests took some time to deliver their valuable words. The Chief Guest was Prof. S M A Faiz, VC of DU (Afrida’s dad was a friend of his); the Special Guest was Mr. Abdur Noor Tushar, former famous debater and the Guest of Honor was Prof. Fakrul Alam, a professor in the English Dept. of DU. After the speeches, it was time for presenting the certificates. However, it all went to hell! Participants were being called on stage to collect their certificates, which were arranged in the order that the debaters were being called. But, the problem was that many of the debaters did not come to attend the closing ceremony. So, we basically had a few confused volunteers on stage frantically searching for the appropriate certificate to hand to the guests! After the minor botch-up, it was time for the presentation. Now, Shoeb & I had worked really hard to make it as enjoyable as possible *although perhaps not allowing Faria & Afrida to provide background voice killed off much of the charm* and I had taken it upon myself to take funny pictures of our OrgCom to include in the presentation. The song “Right Here Right Now” by Fatboy Slim was chosen to be the background music. So, it started. I was operating the laptop from backstage, relying on my own sense of time rather than setting the slides to automatic transition. As the fun parts approached, I couldn’t help but feel very apprehensive. But the audience seemed to be in love with the appealing new idea of such a presentation. They cheered at most of the slides, and each of the subtle and not-so-subtle humor that was added to the presentation was more or less acknowledged. I can’t describe how grateful I felt at those moments to the audience. In fact, we received more than just applaud or cheers. I myself remember hearing shouts of “ESS ROCKS!” and “THANK YOU ESS!”. The presentation did succeed in lifting the whole ceremony after the mishap with the certificates. But soon enough, the fun turned to suspense. We had created suspense deliberately by stalling for a long time before revealing the name of the Champion team. And then, the last slide stated in bold letters, “Manarat (team 2), the CHAMPIONS”!
The Champion Team was handed the trophy (which was shaped as a shield with a pen and a mike in front of it like swords) and the runners-up (Notre Dame College
Half an hour later, it was time for the party. The RCC stage was converted to a dance floor and disco lights were installed in place to turn the auditorium to a night-club! We had earlier planned that we would not allow the O’ level volunteers into the party because they were only kids, but after all the work that they did, we did not have the heart to say no at their eager faces. So, all the debaters and the organizers and the volunteers went crazy at the dance floor and danced like they had never before! We had no DJ, but we did have a good enough collection of party songs in the laptop. So, after the day’s (or rather a month’s for us) work followed a mad and wild hour of fun.
That is pretty much the whole of it, but there are some things which I feel I must add to do justice to this huge journal. Firstly, I had to spend FIFTEEN THOUSAND BUCKS from my own pocket while I was working on the program, after the funds provided by the sponsor were all exhausted. Hasan also spent another twelve thousand from his own pocket. Secondly, our work was greatly appreciated by Zareen Miss and Ranadev Sir, two of the directors of ESS, and even though it took quite a while, they did pay us (Hasan and myself) back the extra money we had spent. They were very happy with the magnitude as well as the quality of our program because it was only us, mere few A’ level students who had taken care of everything.
Next, I should add one incident, which now strikes me as funny, but didn’t back then when it happened. After the 2nd day ended, I had to pay-off the “coke-guy”. Each day, there was a volunteer assigned to the soft-drinks trolley who kept count of how many glasses were being given to the participants. Now, this volunteer, as I found out later, had 35 glasses of coke himself in these two days! And he also “adda-fied” with his friends in front of the trolley and gave them free glasses one after another as well! Another fact is that the “coke-dude” filled only half of each glass, or even less rather, meaning that the number of glasses that he gave should actually be halved. When I was about to pay him off, all these had to be taken into consideration, but he wouldn’t take one single paisa less than the “number of glasses multiplied by 15 taka per glass” which amounted to 7500. As I was in deep financial crisis, I absolutely could not afford to pay him so liberally. While I was arguing, I got into a fight with his assistant and the coke-man started crying in the middle of the road. In the end, the scene turned quite ugly, and so I had to pay him the full amount. *I still hate him!*
Now for the last thing that I’d mention before finishing this marathon piece of writing. Later, we went to Higher-Edge again, mostly to ask for money because we had overshot our budget by a great deal. Not only did they not give us much money, but they also accused us for not giving them much promotion and not highlighting them in the press release. Imagine how you feel when after you have done all this, you have to listen to crap which is not even properly justified. So, bottom line is, I now don’t like Higher-Edge either!
I apologize, but there is yet another thing. It would be a shame not to mention how much I value and treasure this experience. This was the first major event I organized and I cannot even begin to say how much this has helped me grow. Dealing with problems on the spot, thinking every single piece of detail through and acquiring new experiences that I never would have imagined are just a few examples. Even though I have forgotten many of the details of the program, but I would always remember this as something that truly made a difference to my life by allowing me to explore new fields and reach new heights. This tournament has made a difference in the lives of the organizers too, I assume, and also to the organization ESSDC itself. The ESS Debate Club has mounted as a formidable name in the debating field and proved itself in many competitions. Through this tournament, we have all achieved a new beginning.
Rather than describing the preparation and the other details of the debate championship in an objective way, in this write-up I will focus mainly on my experiences throughout the time-span. Firstly, let me say here that intentions for joining ESSDC were all related to debate. So, at first, when the idea of the competition was conceived, my stand was clear. I would remain involved with the organization of this tournament, and then when the tournament starts, I would participate as a debater. Anyway, as I mentioned before, the five of us were talking over different things that we would need to do to organize this tournament. Let me also add here that we had no adult intervention in this. Whatever was there to be done was done by us, and only us. The first part was making a budget for the program. We gathered all the possible expenditure that we would need to make, and listed them. They amounted to Tk. 54,000. With that budget plan, we approached our potential sponsor, Higher-Edge, courtesy of Faria’s broad contact span. After talking over the program a few times, and going to Gulshan in some amazingly disastrous trips (one time during the month of Ramadan we had to break our fast in the street while being out and searching for buses, CNGs, or anything, rather, for a couple of hours, all the while constantly listening to Faria’s ‘ghan-ghan’ of “How much more do you expect me to walk!&rdquo, we finally managed to secure a deal where Higher-Edge would pay us 60% of the budget in advance and another 20% later on, while the other 20% will be paid by the school. Now that the money problems were solved, we started spending away, not only on stuff like posters & venues, but also on daily fancy CNG fares and Dominous Pizza bills!
At this point, let me warn you, you will probably find a lot of loopholes related to time and sequence in the following events and experiences. But please, just overlook them (and pardon me) because I could not get the whole sequence of events correctly on paper if I tried for a hundred years! Now I’ve warned you, I’ll go on.
For the debate tournament, we talked to Higher-Edge and fixed up a suitable name. Naïve as we were, we settled for the cumbersome name of “Higher-Edge–ESSDC Debate Championship 2007”. Higher-Edge gave us a few stipulations and conditions that we must abide by, and again, we acquiesced. Then we got to working. We wanted to do something different from the beginning. So, we decided that we would have a unique theme for the tournament, something more spicy than the usual democracy, poverty, corruption and blah blah blah! After much contemplation and discussion, we settled for “Teens 21st”, reflecting contemporary issues related to drug abuse, student politics, etc. which would allow the debaters to talk more from their own perspective, something that they are not usually able to do frequently. Another one of our major concerns was the whole deal with the invitations to be sent to schools. So, we got a very nicely laid-out invitation letter printed for each of the schools that were in our list and contemplated how we could send the invitations. After putting in a great deal of thought, we decided that we had no other choice but to invite them the hard way, i.e. going to their school buildings and talking to a responsible someone from their debate club, because we knew how information transmission systems in schools could be, of course from the first-hand experience gained at ESS! But we realized that we would like to set up posters in different schools as well, and this can only be done while dropping off the invitation letters. With schools opening after the Eid vacation, and the date of our championship approaching as well, we knew we had to invite the schools fast. So, the result was that we suddenly found ourselves with an inescapable need of getting posters printed within a few days! And of course! At such a time, who else would step in? So, Hasan and I found ourselves in Nilkhet one not-so-fine morning looking for good deals for printing posters and certificates.
Yes, now for the story of my life! We went to one of the many, many printing houses & presses all around us and made a deal that sounded fair enough to us (naïve, how so naïve!). Then we started our work of designing the posters and certificates. Looking back, now I know that what screwed us up real bad was the efficiency (or rather, inefficiency) of the dude who was operating the computer. But neither of us being any graphics designing expert, we understood it far too late! So, we kept on instructing him and he kept on working, on and on, on and on. At some point, we realized it was getting dark! But even then, our designs were far from over. So, we kept on instructing him and again he kept on working, droning on monotonously. Finally, by the time we finished the designs, it was 10:30 in the night! Yes, we had been in Nilkhet for more than 12 hours straight! Now that’s something to tell my grandchildren!
The posters were to be printed by the morning after the next day. So, on the delivery day, I went to pick up the posters and the certificates from that shop, without doubt very enthusiastic about how the fruit of my exhaustive designing experience (my first ever) came out. Seeing the stack of freshly printed posters from the side, I held my breath in apprehension, preparing to be amazed. I took up one of the posters and placed it before my eyes. Wow! Such beauty! The background of black from the top right corner fading into white at the bottom left, the watermarks at various places in the poster, the yellow writing in black background… ALL SUCK! The black was more white than black, which meant the yellow writing came out under a whitish background, making it nearly illegible from a meter’s distance, and the poster was strewn with irregular spots. Firstly, I thought the spots were the fault of one particular poster, but then I picked up some other ones and they also had the same spots! And also another teensy little problem. At the place where there was supposed to be a silhouetted picture, THERE’S NOTHING! Yes, that’s what you get when you order posters from Nilkhet! (DON’T BLAME THE DESIGN; IT WAS GREAT!)
People who call me a calm and composed guy should have seen me then! I went berserk at the printers. They called their boss, whom I clearly told that I wouldn’t be paying for these. He assured me in the most polite voice that the picture that did not come up in print is not that big a deal. He could get it printed in around an hour. Not willing to trust his word again, I oversaw the printing work while I notified the others about my status. After all the posters got printed and cut, I bundled them up and started for school, where classes were going on which I had had to miss. On the way back, I received a call from an unknown number. On receiving it, I heard an authoritative voice telling me to come to school. Dumbfounded, I complied.
On reaching school, I immediately understood something was wrong. The air was still; not a single leaf bristled. A few people were standing here and there, much too quietly. The mighty Professor Nurul Islam, principal of ESS, was standing in front of the Administration room, looking daggers at every hair that moved. I, as nonchalant as I am, strode in without a concern in the world with my bunch of posters and asked “Admin Miss” to hold on to them for a while. I was going to go inside, when PNI sir called me from the back. Having been expecting it, I turned.
Now this, me fellow readers, is the part where I am dying to tell you about the famous, courageous battle of words I fought with my dear Principal. But since that is irrelevant to this article, I very sadly have to skip it. Just know this, that in order to organize this debate championship, not only did we not get significant assistance from the ESS management, but we had to fight the bureaucracy as well!
But despite all the barriers, our work was progressing. Various sorts of work, not least of them was sending the invitations to schools. Even though, schools were going on, we discovered that we had no other choice but to set off in different directions in groups, all the while skipping classes, and go to the schools one by one and talk to someone from the debate club who is responsible enough to make sure that the school sends teams to the competition. Sounds easy, right? WRONG! You can never predict all the things that could happen when you go to a school to drop off an invitation for a debate tournament. Potential problems include:
1. Getting to the schools was a huge load of trouble. Traffic congestions, ambiguous addresses, apparently non-existent schools (to locals), you name it! And whole
2. On reaching, first you have to wait to see the administration/reception, then you must wait further after they tell you that they would try to find someone from the debate club (in some cases, they may tell you they don’t have a debate club, in a very confounded voice), then they could ask you weird and irrelevant questions about the tournament whose answers nobody would have thought to put into the invitation.
3. You would almost certainly not be allowed to put up the posters unless you are willing to spend another hour. So, we had to leave a few posters with the admin most of the time.
4. And of course, these would all happen after you have been redirected to two other campuses from the first one you approached!
Somehow, we were all alive after the invitations were done. It was time to fix all the details. The guests and media partners were confirmed. Of course we had to run after them too with invitations and wait decades for confirmation. The auditorium (Russian Cultural Centre) that was booked from beforehand was hired, paying a thinner sum, courtesy of Ranadev sir. Sound system and lights were ordered as well, courtesy of Mushfiq’s contacts this time. Food was finalized. It was up to me to finalize the food items. And I am proud to say that I made good use of the money from the sponsor that was with me to taste and select the best there was! Selecting food, now that’s a job I’ll be glad to do anytime! So, food orders were placed and the rest of the money was taken from Higher-Edge as the competition drew near. The trophy for the Champions and the Runners-up was ordered as well. Meanwhile, I had a brilliant idea. A firm believer in doing things differently from others, I wanted this tournament to be something which debaters would remember. So, I made a logical calculation and found out how much soft drinks the average participant would drink in two days. I assumed a mean of 5 glasses in two days, because some would drink less than 5, and some more. The calculations revealed an expenditure that could be accommodated in the budget. So, I proposed my idea to the others, which was that we would give unlimited drinks to all the participants. They liked my idea as well, and so I selected a “coke-man” (you know, those who walk around with the vans/trolleys and supply soft-drinks), who, to my disliking did not reduce the cost per glass from 15. But even so, to create a positive impact in the minds of the participants, I acceded to the unfair deal.
Meanwhile, we weren’t getting teams. At only 16, the trivial target quota of teams began to look more like an insurmountable peak. That called for one of the most humiliating things that we had had to do for this competition. We figured that it was completely our drive to make this tournament a good success (the fact that this was the very first tournament to be hosted by ESS wasn’t helping). So, we had to set off for the schools again, this time with registration forms and event schedules and other relevant documents, so that we could get the schools to register teams from their own campus. Even then, we had difficulty getting them to commit. And they would often treat us like we were petty runners or ignorant volunteers (again, the fact that I wasn’t a known face in the debating arena yet wasn’t helping!) but we would have to keep a smiling face because we just NEEDED them to register their friggin’ teams! Another problem that hindered our progress was the unfortunate overlap of a couple of University tournaments with our own, where apparently A’ level teams also participated. But at last, and by that I mean at the very last day the tournament was supposed to begin, the total team quota was fulfilled!
The last two days before the competition, I barely got to return home. Naïve as we were, we could not plan everything efficiently. So, things sprouted up in the last minute. We do not have tissue papers and disposable glasses, the badges for organizers and volunteers have not been made, there are no water filters in the building, there aren’t enough chairs either, and what not! Meanwhile, Faria and Afrida threw tantrums saying that their ‘post’ in ESSDC must go on the badges, just a simple “Organizer” wouldn’t do! With Faria’s frequent trademark of “I’m the president, give me some respect!” driving me crazy, I was aghast, but still adamant. And for other reasons as well. I was making a Power-point presentation for the closing ceremony (working with Shoeb Md. Moniruzzaman) which would sum up the competition and also announce the winner. They insisted that they would give “background commentary” to the presentation! My, such creativity!
On the night before, we rolled up our sleeves along with our trusty volunteers and worked at the venue (the ESS building at 7 no. Dhanmondi) to arrange the chairs and tables for the debates which were ordered from a decorator at the eleventh hour. But before that, we had to clear off infinite tiny, miniscule, wooden chairs (which were surprisingly heavy) from each of the rooms (because this ESS building is the kids section). Strenuous work, definitely, and now that I look back at it, I realize that the female volunteers had put in immense physical effort and sheer dedication, more than some of the male ones who were evading the exertion, to get the work done in time. If I have not before, I thank them now for that, and all the other volunteers too, for that matter.
The day loomed in. We were all tense. Getting the final pieces in place, we were all set for the opening ceremony at Russian Cultural Centre. We had emphasized on punctuality in the event schedule, and we were getting apprehensive about the participants’ response. But as soon as the desk at the entrance was set up, the debaters started pouring in. So many arrived so fast, that we were taken totally aback. Some teams had only given oral confirmation and had not paid the registration fee yet, and so we set up a registration desk for them. Soon, the opening ceremony was under way. After a few speeches from sponsors and directors and such, it was my turn to announce the topic for the 1st round debates. The topic was, “Teenagers are the sole cause for the spread of yabba”. At the time, I had very humble debating experience, and definitely not any experience of speaking in front of a crowd of more than 5 people! So, when I got up on the stage, I had crazy butterflies fluttering in my stomach and my knees were experiencing an earthquake scaled 8.0. Somehow, I managed to squeak out the topic and then assigned a volunteer to each team who would take that team to the adjacent ESS building, where the first two rounds of debate were to take place. After all the teams were sent, we wrapped up everything from RCC and moved all of our battalions to the battlefield.
Once we reached there, it was time for some frantic running around and checking if everything is alright in each of the 8 rooms where the debates would take place. I do not remember much about what exactly I was so busy with, but I can definitely recall a certain incident. While I was running towards the back of the building, I noticed Mahnaz Apu (she was the first ever president of ESSDC and helped us a lot with organizing the tournament, mostly in bringing and managing the adjudicators) engaged in a loud conversation with an unfamiliar guy. I approached to check what the fuss was all about. What I learned did not please me at all. The “guy” was actually the debate coach for
The debates started on time. Having gone to a couple of debate competitions as spectator, I knew about the state of punctuality and proper order in the debating arena. So, I had insisted and emphasized from the beginning that our tournament must not run a single minute late (well, let’s say must not run more than 5 to 10 minutes late!). As the debates started, many of the organizers and volunteers went into rooms to watch the debates of their favorite teams and support them. I, however, stayed outside of my own volition, not willing to let anything go wrong. Plus, I had the evening refreshments to be concerned about. I sent a couple of volunteers to bring the food. After running a few more errands, the debates ended and it was time to distribute the snacks. That went well enough, and to my delight, everyone more or less liked the food (a chicken burger and a sweet called balushai). Afterwards, the 2nd round of debates started, and the day finished off with the declaration of the teams which had survived after the 2nd round of debates and the schedule for the debates the next day. As I had anticipated, the “unlimited-coke” idea was quite a hit. But there was one tiny problem. People were having too damn much of soft-drinks compared to what I had anticipated! But after such a strenuous day, I was more willing to get home than ponder over the budget.
The next day was even tougher. After going to bed at 1 at night, I had to wake up before 6 at dawn. Having two slices of bread, I set off for the school building, where everything had to be set up before the teams arrived at the specified time. Again the same work: different problems sprouting up from all directions, the presentation requiring completion, bringing the lunch, etc. Time flew like the wind. Soon, we were nearing the end of the Semifinals and lunch was provided to the participants. We, the organizers, were not so lucky. Although it felt bad, we even had to keep many volunteers go hungry for quite a while, because there was just too much work to be done. I remember a really scary moment which followed right after lunch-time. I was at the school building, when I suddenly received a call from Hasan (or Murtaza, I’m not sure) telling me frantically, “The guests have arrived and there is nobody at Russian Cultural Centre to greet them!” And why? Because our honorable president Faria and our very own Afrida had gone to Faria’s house to change into/out of (again, I don’t remember) sarees, for what was probably the third time! Thankfully, Hasan had reached RCC on time to greet the guests. So, everything went well enough and we were soon all set for the Finals. I had been very enthusiastic to watch the Finals but unfortunately I had to go without witnessing any of the debates because I was busy finishing the presentation at the school building. The others who were not as unlucky as me said the debates of the day that took place on stage were all quite enjoyable. Sucks to be a perfectionist!
Before the grand closing ceremony began, I was confronted by a few challenging problems. Firstly, the trophy for the Champions had some spots where the ink was botched up (I know what you are thinking, “WHY was there ink in the first place?” But again, that’s something that could happen when you are ordering a trophy for the first time). Faria was supposed to have corrected the trophy by applying some watercolor that she had, but unfortunately for me, she had forgotten, and I had to do it myself. Secondly, I found unsigned certificates gaping at me, and again, unfortunately, Faria had forgotten/neglected to sign them beforehand, and so I was forced to call her up and shout at her to get it done ASAP, because the ink from gel-pens took a while to set in. After all these problems were taken care of, the certificates had to be sorted in a specific order so that they could be presented to the participants in the closing ceremony by the chief guest. I got some of the volunteers to order the certificates, which I am quite confident was done correctly. Also, I and Shoeb finished the presentation, and added in the name of the Champion team, which had been revealed to us by the adjudicators. The closing ceremony was now all set to commence!
Afrida, our all time great host, was obviously the host for the program as well. Then, again the speeches. This time, each of the guests took some time to deliver their valuable words. The Chief Guest was Prof. S M A Faiz, VC of DU (Afrida’s dad was a friend of his); the Special Guest was Mr. Abdur Noor Tushar, former famous debater and the Guest of Honor was Prof. Fakrul Alam, a professor in the English Dept. of DU. After the speeches, it was time for presenting the certificates. However, it all went to hell! Participants were being called on stage to collect their certificates, which were arranged in the order that the debaters were being called. But, the problem was that many of the debaters did not come to attend the closing ceremony. So, we basically had a few confused volunteers on stage frantically searching for the appropriate certificate to hand to the guests! After the minor botch-up, it was time for the presentation. Now, Shoeb & I had worked really hard to make it as enjoyable as possible *although perhaps not allowing Faria & Afrida to provide background voice killed off much of the charm* and I had taken it upon myself to take funny pictures of our OrgCom to include in the presentation. The song “Right Here Right Now” by Fatboy Slim was chosen to be the background music. So, it started. I was operating the laptop from backstage, relying on my own sense of time rather than setting the slides to automatic transition. As the fun parts approached, I couldn’t help but feel very apprehensive. But the audience seemed to be in love with the appealing new idea of such a presentation. They cheered at most of the slides, and each of the subtle and not-so-subtle humor that was added to the presentation was more or less acknowledged. I can’t describe how grateful I felt at those moments to the audience. In fact, we received more than just applaud or cheers. I myself remember hearing shouts of “ESS ROCKS!” and “THANK YOU ESS!”. The presentation did succeed in lifting the whole ceremony after the mishap with the certificates. But soon enough, the fun turned to suspense. We had created suspense deliberately by stalling for a long time before revealing the name of the Champion team. And then, the last slide stated in bold letters, “Manarat (team 2), the CHAMPIONS”!
The Champion Team was handed the trophy (which was shaped as a shield with a pen and a mike in front of it like swords) and the runners-up (
Half an hour later, it was time for the party. The RCC stage was converted to a dance floor and disco lights were installed in place to turn the auditorium to a night-club! We had earlier planned that we would not allow the O’ level volunteers into the party because they were only kids, but after all the work that they did, we did not have the heart to say no at their eager faces. So, all the debaters and the organizers and the volunteers went crazy at the dance floor and danced like they had never before! We had no DJ, but we did have a good enough collection of party songs in the laptop. So, after the day’s (or rather a month’s for us) work followed a mad and wild hour of fun.
That is pretty much the whole of it, but there are some things which I feel I must add to do justice to this huge journal. Firstly, I had to spend FIFTEEN THOUSAND BUCKS from my own pocket while I was working on the program, after the funds provided by the sponsor were all exhausted. Hasan also spent another twelve thousand from his own pocket. Secondly, our work was greatly appreciated by Zareen Miss and Ranadev Sir, two of the directors of ESS, and even though it took quite a while, they did pay us (Hasan and myself) back the extra money we had spent. They were very happy with the magnitude as well as the quality of our program because it was only us, mere few A’ level students who had taken care of everything.
Next, I should add one incident, which now strikes me as funny, but didn’t back then when it happened. After the 2nd day ended, I had to pay-off the “coke-guy”. Each day, there was a volunteer assigned to the soft-drinks trolley who kept count of how many glasses were being given to the participants. Now, this volunteer, as I found out later, had 35 glasses of coke himself in these two days! And he also “adda-fied” with his friends in front of the trolley and gave them free glasses one after another as well! Another fact is that the “coke-dude” filled only half of each glass, or even less rather, meaning that the number of glasses that he gave should actually be halved. When I was about to pay him off, all these had to be taken into consideration, but he wouldn’t take one single paisa less than the “number of glasses multiplied by 15 taka per glass” which amounted to 7500. As I was in deep financial crisis, I absolutely could not afford to pay him so liberally. While I was arguing, I got into a fight with his assistant and the coke-man started crying in the middle of the road. In the end, the scene turned quite ugly, and so I had to pay him the full amount. *I still hate him!*
Now for the last thing that I’d mention before finishing this marathon piece of writing. Later, we went to Higher-Edge again, mostly to ask for money because we had overshot our budget by a great deal. Not only did they not give us much money, but they also accused us for not giving them much promotion and not highlighting them in the press release. Imagine how you feel when after you have done all this, you have to listen to crap which is not even properly justified. So, bottom line is, I now don’t like Higher-Edge either!
I apologize, but there is yet another thing. It would be a shame not to mention how much I value and treasure this experience. This was the first major event I organized and I cannot even begin to say how much this has helped me grow. Dealing with problems on the spot, thinking every single piece of detail through and acquiring new experiences that I never would have imagined are just a few examples. Even though I have forgotten many of the details of the program, but I would always remember this as something that truly made a difference to my life by allowing me to explore new fields and reach new heights. This tournament has made a difference in the lives of the organizers too, I assume, and also to the organization ESSDC itself. The ESS Debate Club has mounted as a formidable name in the debating field and proved itself in many competitions. Through this tournament, we have all achieved a new beginning.
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