I know I said I wouldn't ever again, but I did go ahead and speak for NLS at an Indian debate. A mere (though it didn't seem so during the auto rides there and back) fifteen kilometres from campus, no less.
I went with a team I didn't know too well, completely out of practice, with a team equally out of practice, encountered the very same sickening things that put me off debating a few months back, did things I wouldn't have otherwise thought necessary and did it with the assumption that it was only a matter of time before the bubble burst.
When the motion fell, however, I was far from unhappy. Yes, we could've made our point better; yes, we would've been infinitely better if I'd known I was going first a little earlier than five minutes before the debate began and yes to a million other things that I can now happily dismiss as mere details.
And though debating takes a lot out of me (quite literally at times), the last three days have led me to believe that, for a person of my (lack of) skill and poise, perhaps the default approach to debating should be one of zero expectation.
I'm certainly not changing my mind drastically about the February 7 incident--after all, the only team we knew were better than us we lost to. But I'm certain that, of the four debates we did, we would've lost three if they had happened in that cursed Delhi winter.
And it gives me belief that, with a good fourteen months still left here, there might, just might, be enough time for one last shot at it in the big time.
