Literary Escapades!

Before going ahead, I would want to thank you for showing the courtesy to read this. When the world is full of Instagram stories, Facebook memes and Snapchat filters it takes the soul of a legend to take the time out for an amateurs work.So now you know you have the soul of a legend... ;)

This post shares my countable zest with activities in 2017 involving public speaking in which I believe there is still scope of improvement for me.Here is the gist of them in chronological order -

Inter-college Lit fest - The hardest thing about any event is that information about it always flows in late, registrations are always overflowing and finding partner is always difficult. Yes, all this happened. We had to request the organiser to consider our registration which he said will be finalised on the day of event only. His decision would be solely based on the number of participants who would actually turn up. I teamed up with my classmate but due to so less credibility of we be allowed or not on that day, we almost dropped the decision of going. Thanks to Miss Killedar we did go (yay!!), all planned at the very last moment. On the day of the event we reached well on time finding only the two of us formally dressed. It was L.O.L literally. We decided for white collar shirt with blue jeans and it was a mistake we learned from ;-). In the picture below, I can be seen debating why white shirt and blue jeans must never be worn at any event..haha

Well the actual topic was "Convicted rape juvenile be treated as an adult under the law". Got the reference to Nirbhaya Case? After almost 2 hours of the debating event, we realized that all points we were about to make have already been covered by fellow participants and we were like...ghar chalte h yaar. But guess what, we did stay, instead we did a pretty decent job. And I am happy for us.

I participated in a Group Discussion event also and believe me - I found elite groupies there. There was this bunch of students from the same college who literally owned the fest as there group members bagged prizes for most of the events. And during the GD, I found out that they were intentionally zoning out people from other colleges so that only their group members could go ahead. They would literally turn faces and ignore people speaking right on their face! YES they did so, not exaggerating.

Guess what - Plan failed!! I was there in the final round of the GD after three elimination rounds and so were members from other colleges. Thankfully, the judges were smart enough to notice this and didn't select them all. Also, some of them were pretty rude and loud like not even listening to other's argument.

After the final round, the winner was declared, it was not me(it's oka no need to awww) but a Blue turban Sardar ji. He was a very eloquent and impulsive speaker. I felt like he rapped his way out in every round.

Last thing left to do was, attend a JAM session and the JAM Master had asked the participants to introduce themselves in a funny way. And this same guy happen to rock it here also. He rapped almost instantly and man that was surreal to see in real life. I knew by now this guy is talented. And finally Who won the JAM? - the Blue turban Sardar ji only.

Solo Debate Event - This was an individual participation. Topic was really awesome - "This house believes politics should be banned from college campus". You could get the direct reference to Kanhaiya Kumar case. I literally enjoyed speaking here. And guess what the last moment heroic entry of whom happened here - THE BLUE TURBAN GUY. He wore the same shirt, jeans and turban. And I knew he would kill it on stage here also. Interesting thing to note here is, the girl sitting beside me said, "We have no chance of winning now, this guy gave debating tutorials in our college" And I went like I know right. What I found funny was that she mentioned him as the self proclaimed SALMAN KHAN of the DU Debating Society. The winner was soon announced, a differently-abled person whose debate was less a debate more an emotional account of how politics harmed his college life. He was brought on a wheel chair and spoke differently with little twisted words. Well, participants had different opinions, not everybody was happy with the decision, some considering it biased.

Youth Parliament - This had to be THE most random one. One of my friend texts up and says we are having this event in 2 days, you should participate no? I was a bit apprehensive since youth parliament is something I knew nothing about but he was generous enough to explain all titbits of it. I remember spending few hours reading only the  mandatory catalog he sent, I went for it. Ethnics was the code so Kurti because why not!

What I anticipated did not happen. The speakers were far more prepared. Since it was bilingual, Hindi speakers swept me off my feet. I was portraying BJP supporter Roopa Ganguly. And soon found out that fellow members of the house were as enthusiastic. The one portraying Arvind Kejriwal came with his signature muffler on, I mean I was impressed! The whole thing ended on a really happy note with people scribbling notes for each other and they were really complementing.And that's about it.

Ps - Any resemblance to people in real life is not my responsibility. The intent was just to share the experience nothing else. Views expressed are completely mine. I sincerely look forward to more such lit escapades as I would like to call them! Fingers crossed!