JCI – a new adventure. Let me take you through my very first JCI experience.
Reason to join JCI and fortunately it happened as expected that not only I met varied people who are from different corporal verticals, cultures who brings their intellectuality at one forum but also that emotional kindergarten bonding, I was living my school life again, doing projects not homework, disciplined without a headmaster but a President, this was altogether completing full circle, with fun.
It was National Debate Championship Competition held Mindspace building and where all JCI chapters were participating and competing. JCI Curepipe was host so I felt like it’s my prerogative to be there and cheer for team. The room was fully occupied, I couldn’t recognize members, so was desperately looking for JCI Curepipe members to bail me out from my nervousness. I met few members and was at ease, but soon I realized the atmosphere was too friendly and everyone was accessible. I met members from other chapters with delight, I was happy to introduce myself and really felt flabbergasted that all were so welcoming. My opinion about JCI being people forum was coming affirmative.
Though I went to cheer up for my team but sooner was given a chance to be in the debate competition that too as a first speaker. I recalled my school days when I was doing well at essay speaking; I got an opportunity to live it again. We were given a topic “Whether Youth is curse today or ray of hope” and we had to speak in favour, and we had 20 minutes to prepare, we then were engaged in brainstorming session jotting down points in favor but at the same time recording the areas where the opponent team could baffle us with counter questions. We made some strategies and divided the pointers among ourselves. We discussed on how to sweep the audience and make our point stronger by our body language too and opinion. The time was ticking and I was getting apprehensive too as how it is going to be.
Finally we were the first two teams and our opponent team was JCI Cityplus. Sooner I saw the distinguished jury members realized this is a serious battle and had to be dealt professionally. We started well and were able to put our points with rational, good examples and also counter attacked the opponent team. Strategy was working and my 2nd and 3rd speaker were helping me with instantaneous points what opponent team were putting and I saw us winning, it was indeed electrifying. To correct yourself you need to wrong someone so at a point I was feeling as in I was lampooning our opponent team, but it was a competition and it deserve to be dealt in that spirit.
We draw our first blood by winning first round and moved to final round where we have to meet spirited JCI Port Louis girls. To add misery the topic given was “Whether Mauritius should allow capital punishment or not” and we had to speak in favour. I realized that to speak for capital punishment is difficult as the topic is very sensitive and sympathetic. We as team again indulged ourselves in writing down pointers and sharing strategies again. The artillery of reasoning, canon shells of opinion was bombarded from both sides, making most of body language to convince the jury, pitching voice high was adding high voltage sparks and I believe both teams did fairly well.
Though we lost to JCI Port Louis in final but as I always believe that best team should win, I learned the art of public speaking and was happy that I managed to get my team to the finals. The event was followed by distribution of certificates and shield to winning team.
These two hours had a changed person in me, who made many friends in that just two hours, earned respect too and was confidently walking down the stair unlike being nervous I was initially.
Vishal Nayan
JCI Curepipe Aspiring Member