Pathao presents Wordplay 3.0, a debating competition arranged by Independent University, Bangladesh Debating Club (IUBDC), has been over. As many as 44 teams with participants of all ages attended the tournament. The new members of the club arranged the event.
The event was held on December 14 and 15 with the theme being winter and decorations of snowflakes and snowmen as well as reindeers and Christmas trees, all of which were hand-made by the organisers themselves. The organisers made cookies and brownies for everyone and distributed them by ‘the Santa Claus Organiser’. In addition, they took ‘breaking’ in a literal sense and made 12 penguin piñatas for the 12 teams qualifying for the next round; four of which were for the Novice Category and eight for the Open Category.
For the preliminary stage, there were six rounds. Four rounds were held on the first day, and the other two on the second. Then the second round was divided into two categories: the Novice Category and The Open Category where the Novice Category was directly qualified to finals and the Open Category had their semi-finals and finals. The competition was cut-throat but full of suspense as it was found that almost eight generations of debaters from schools, universities and even professionals of Dhaka, Chattogram, and Rajshahi came to participate. The tournament also allowed the teams to name themselves whatever they wished, and their creativity should be applauded for making the match-ups so funny to be read out loud as it included names like 'boshenboshen, boshejan', 'goribershombol', 'uporebaash, niche shorbonaash', and 'duibajabo'.
After battling with people from various levels of the debating platform, the winning team in the Novice Category was Team Be Careful consisting of Md Tamhidul Islam from Dhaka Residential Model College and Redwan Rifat from Adamjee Cantonment Public School, and the winning team in the Open Category was Team T Dawg and The Big Dawg consisting of Mohammed Taosif Amin Khan and Sourodip Paul from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) of Dhaka University. Moreover, the awards were handed over by Fahim Ahmed, CFO of Pathao and Hashmi Rafsanjani, former country marketing consultant, Bangladesh at Google and current regional AdSales Lead GfB at Grab.
This tournament was merely designed to be about helping the debaters practice for all the international debating competitions coming up; however, it turned out to be a shout out to all debate-lovers as well as a red carpet to walk on by the newcomers.
Many new recruits have been a part of the first-borns of IUBDC after it was claimed to be the Asian Champions of 2018. These new members are the very different, and some of them have debated for the first time in this tournament. However, veterans like Zubair Ridoan, Fardeen Ameen, Sajid Safwan, and Aminur Rashid, were kind enough to notice how disheartened some of them were after the first day. These veterans talked with these young debaters and explained how they are some baby birds who only hatched their way into the debating world and that eventually they will understand in which direction the wind blows and might learn how to fly someday.
That is how IUBDC works; it welcomes one in with open arms and makes one feel as if you belong there. The organisers of the new generation worked day and night for the last two months. They also showed a video made by them to pay tribute to their seniors.
The writer is a student of the School of Life Sciences, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). She can be reached at sadia.sweta@gmail.com