How Not to Greet Important People by Nikhil Amarnath _ Campus Diaries

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This story references

I was graced with the luck to represent India at the incredible Battle of

Ideas festival about a month ago at the Barbican Centre in London.Though the Debating Matters competition was but a part of this

festival, it meant that I had the opportunity to interact with a whole

array of really interesting people with radical views and the intellect to

stand by what they said. The atmosphere at the Battle of Ideas was

incredibly unique, allowing the audience to interact freely with the

debaters; it wasn't just a panel that debated, but a gathering of manypeople collectively shaping thought. Being a speaker at the event

meant that I had access to the speakers' room where all of the

speakers went to prepare their notes, freshen up and have a bite or a

coffee and talk to each other. Which brings me to my dilemma.

How do you say hi to someone you want to meet?

I was perplexed. If anything, the relative ease of interaction at this

place had me startled. Here they were, lined up right behind me

chatting with each other, coming to sit on couches right next to me,

standing at tables right in front of me, walking in through the door

ahead of me.

Most people who know me don't believe me to be socially awkward,

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nor do they ever acknowledge that I have stagefright. Granted, it's

understandable considering that I'm pretty aloof on stage, but that's

merely my way of dismissing the task of confronting an onlooking

audience. But all these fears seemed to be playing up over the Battle of

Ideas weekend. More so, the idea of approaching someone and saying"Hi" baffled me, and the imaginary interactions that I had in my head

just before actually meeting someone never seemed to have a good

ending.

Needless to say, I had my fair share of awkward interactions at the

festival.

It began at the Spiked magazine stall where Mr Patrick Hayes was

sitting and I was pretty thrilled, rushing to go over and say hi - but I

stopped in my tracks. Having only seen his face in this(fortunately

only a week before the debate), I wasn't even sure if it was him. In my

head, I imagined saying "Hi Mr Patrick, I'm a big fan" to the shock ofthe revelation that he was not Patrick, which seemed way too

awkward.

Instead, I went with the incredibly obnoxious "Hi, who are you?"

How pathetic is that? I was the one who went over, some teenage kid

in a purple shirt, and I'd asked HIM who he was. It was the last thing I

intended to do, but it had been done. Luckily, he was really nice,

introducing himself as Patrick Hayes. Sigh. If only I'd just gone with

my initial instinct. I'd made a bad first impression, so I quickly

attempted to recover, mentioning that I read Spiked quite a bit, and

enjoyed their style (which isn't flattery, it's very true). In my head, itstill sounded like flattery, so I attempted to confirm it wasn't, by

mentioning that I found it humorous when the Guardian reviewed

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articles from Spiked and found them not to their taste. Mr Hayes

laughed, saying that those articles always amused them when they

came out.

And so, the first interaction I had at the Battle of Ideas ended pretty

well, much better than it had started atleast. And then I ran into one

of the judges for our debate, one we'd met before in the Indian

segment of our competition; Mr Austin Williams. A warm hi, more

comfortable this time, followed by a "Hey, I've a copy of your book.

Don't mind signing it?" Another conversation thrown away. He

laughed, probably thinking it was an attempt to pander to his goodside, so I quickly added, "After the debate". Still not so bad. I'd already

met him earlier, so this interaction was far more friendly.

We walked into the first session of the Battle of Ideas, a debate titled

"The Crisis of Innovation: Dude, Where's My Flying Car?" The debate

was very engaging, with a whole cluster of viewpoints coming intoplay. It slowly concluded with two panellists taking the fore and

disagreeing with each other strongly, Andrew Graves pioneering a

reboot of the manufacturing sector and citing Germany as an example

of what a good manufacturing industry can do for your economy while

Vicky Pryce argued that the economy perhaps isn't as grave as it looks,

and that this lull is not a peak from which we fall. Both had greatprecedent, but the crowd didn't seem to connect much with Ms Pryce's

theoretical arguments. I managed to put in a word into the debate by

pointing out the perverse selective nature of globalism and

innovation, with the example of plugs, citing examples from an article

I'd written earlier here. I hurried through the question, rambling

towards the end, but apparently my point was made, as Andrew later

humorously commented with a reference to my plugs analogy, which

felt great.

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Questioning the panel about the globalism and innovation with the

unexpected example of plugs.

But on walking out, we met Mr Phil Mullan, who chaired the debate. I

obviously recognised him, having been watching him for the good part

of two hours, but I'd not remembered his name. I fortunately didn't go

so far as to ask him that, choosing instead to check it in the Speakers'

Profiles later, but I felt horrible. He was a really nice person, asking

about our experience at the festival and discussing the debate that had

just happened, and about our debate in the afternoon that day. He also

walked back with us to the Speakers' Room, where he then left us for

he had other things to do. I sat down with Ilhaam (my schoolmate and

debating partner if you aren't already aware) and we began to draft out

our speeches for the evening. Across the table from us was Ms Pryce,

who I noticed suddenly. I had a chat with her, and she was happy that

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I'd taken due note of her viewpoint as well; she wasn't too happy with

the audience response. In that aspect, debates can be pretty harsh

sometimes. Claire Fox walked into the Speakers' Room just then and

greeted Ms Pryce, and they exchanged pleasantries. Claire is the

director of the Institute of Ideas, the organisation behind the festival.She then saw Ilhaam and I, and Mr Tony Gilland was also with us, and

she warmly welcomed us and asked us if we were having a good time.

This seemed to make an impression on Ms Pryce, who asked us if we

were speaking that day, to which we told her about the Debating

Matters final. She gave us quite a lot of interesting input on the topic,

but told us she couldn't come because she was attending a play withher child starring in it. She said goodbye and we took our seat again to

resume preparations.

In my head, I was elated. A rather successful interaction. And then a

man walked by and asked if the seat next to us was taken. He also

asked us if we were speaking, and then said forcefully, "Megacities aregreat. To hell with the countryside, we need megacities to free the

peoples of the countryside." I didn't get his name, but it was

entertaining as well as enlightening to listen to his arguments for

megacities. He was very one sided in favour of megacities, but his

reasons were solid. He then had to go to attend his own debate.

It was lunchtime. We ate lunch at a standing table, Ilhaam and I, and

we were met by Ms Cany Ash. Our table had more space so she asked if

she could join, and she had lots to say regarding our topic. Midway

through our topic, Mr Pedro Bismarck asked if he could join our table

as well. He is the editor at Punkto magazine, a prominent architecture

magazine based in Portugal, and I'd read a few articles from just a

week before; I immediately brought it up. He was pretty surprised, he

asked me where I was from. "India? Wow. You read Portuguese

Attending a massive debate festival is no joking matter,especially with a Speaker badge on you; it's an opportunity

to meet many important people. This is the ultimate guide

on how NOT to begin an introduction, through a few

How Not To GreetImportant People

NikhilAmarnath

31st Dec 2013

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magazine in India?" We all laughed a bit, and then they talked about

the debatethey had just spoken in, and Pedro then talked about his

time in Berlin which was really interesting to hear; about the urban

culture that was developing and then about what went wrong, and I

realised that there's a lot of information out there that sounds sodifferent when it's narrated in a personal tone. Perhaps all the

information you need is a slide away on your smartphone...Later that

evening, when we met Pedro again, he told me about how Portugal had

occupied Japan, which I did not know, and then asked me if I'd heard

of tempura, which is actually a Portuguese dish. He'd come to Goa and

really enjoyed the blend of Portuguese and Indian culture, andpromised to visit Bangalore after inviting us to Portugal.

The two of them as architects brought out more interesting views and

I remembered to jot them down in my notebook. After lunch (which

was a neat sandwich, a chocolate and an apple nicely packaged in a

brown bag), we headed to the Masterplanning the Futuredebate.Austin was chairing the debate, and the topic was pretty relevant to

what we'd be debating in about three hours from then. We walked in a

bit late, and made our way to the back of the room. The acoustics were

incredible; even rustling could be heard everywhere in the room, and

the mics that the panellists wore were almost unnecessary. I got to

question the panel again, but this time I was unnecessarily harsh;

panellist Farshid Moussavi used Paris as an example of why we don't

need to change cities and should instead preserve their character, to

which I pointed out that modern Paris is a result of Baron

Haussmann's massive overhaul of the city, and went on to say that her

point was hypocritical. Some 17 year old kid (still wearing a purple

shirt) calling an incredibly well established prominent architect a

hypocrite, I felt bad. But the debate just carried on, and after the

examples...

Battle of Ideas/TOM FENN

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debate outside, she was all smiles and saying goodbye to Austin.

Everyone was smoking by the doors, and Ilhaam wanted to get back to

the speakers' room to prepare. I told her I'd meet her later, and

decided to hang around in the chill London air for a bit. Austin

introduced me to Mr Theodore Dounas, his boss. "Oh, you're the onewho brought up the Haussmann point, yeah?" That was the best part

about the Battle of Ideas; everyone listened, and everyone made note

of the things that mattered. Theo talked about the importance of

approaches and priorities of people and how cultures differed across

the world. "When we came to China, it was a totally different world. If

you tell the average Chinese guy that an old relic is nice, he says, *cuemock Chinese accent* 'No. Make new building.' " He then pointed out

that people's needs are different; the Westerners were preoccupied

with sustainability and clamping down on growth while the emerging

world aims big. After about half an hour, Austin laughed and asked

when the debate was; considering that he was going to be a judge, he

should've known, but he was a busy man, attending debates all day.

"Yeah, yeah, I knew that," with a nasty wink after I told him where

it'd be. I headed back to the speakers' room and met up with Ilhaam.

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AUSTIN: "The next question will be from you, in the blue shirt." ME:

"It's purple, actually."

After the debate (I'll be writing another article about that part of the

trip later in better detail; now, it's only about meeting people), Austin

signed my book as promised. I told him that though it had incredibly

interesting points, the book was a little dense. He agreed, laughing,

and proceeded to write his message in a handwriting that was plain

horrible, and I told him that it's something we have in common. He

then read it out to me.

Thus ended the first day at the Battle of Ideas festival.

"To Nikhil: It has been an honour to know and meet you. I apologise if

this book let you down in the debate...but now you can move forward to

bigger and better things. Signed, Austin Williams."

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The next day, we weren't there for long; we reached, and Mr Dolan

Cummings introduced us to Mr Tim Black, deputy editor of Spiked. I

was so glad that someone we knew was there to introduce us, because

it made things so much easier; Dolan had been at the Regional Finalsand the National Finals as well, and occasionally messages me

about some of my articles here on CD. "He's a fan of yours, he reads

Spiked a lot," Dolan said to Tim. I then asked them where Mr Brendan

O'Neill was. They looked at each other for a moment, and then sighed.

Brendan is the head editor of Spiked magazine, and I'd wanted to say

hi. "He's probably the fastest moving man on Earth. I think he'sdownstairs in a debate right now, you better catch him at it because

once he's out, he moves really quick. I think he's actually off to the US

this afternoon after his second debate," Tim said.

We ran down, Ilhaam and I, to catch the debate. Unfortunately, we had

to leave midway because we wanted to attend the Barbicanarchitectural tour. So, having seen Brendan bring up some really

interesting points about trust and whistleblowers and the public realm

(He stated that the UK has one camera for every twelve people, and

after that I started to notice the cameras everywhere), we headed back

to the Cinema 3 hall to catch the tour.

The tour was cancelled, after we'd waited half an hour for it.

"The trust debate won't have finished yet, we can still catch the end,"

I said to Ilhaam. We ran.

We entered just as it were concluding, and caught the last fifteenminutes. And then, it ended, and everyone began to disperse. I waited

until Brendan walked off stage, and we rushed to follow him; we were

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like crazy stalkers. And then, we reached the stairwell.

Cinema 1, the venue of this debate, is about four flights of stairs

underground. And Brendan was climbing the stairs right in front of us.

Ilhaam was annoyed now; "Say hi, what are you waiting for!" And I

was perplexed again. What in the world can I say to him? But she

wouldn't let up. "We did all this just so that you can meet him, and

now he's right in front of you! Say SOMETHING." And then...

I poked him on his elbow.

He didn't notice.

I poked him again.

"Yes?" He was rather confused, but polite. "Hi, Brendan, we're from

India and we came to speak at the Battle of Ideas as part of the

Debating Matters competition. I'm a big fan of Spiked."

"Yeah? You read it in India? That's pretty neat." "Yeah. I really like

your style of writing as well."

Then, a lull in the conversation. We'd crossed 2 flights of stairs by

now. There wasn't anything to say, really, and he was pretty busy -"Okay, I'm going to go to my car now." He went out at this level itself,

the parking level. Ilhaam couldn't stop laughing.

We reached the Spiked counter again, on our way to the Speakers'

Room, and Mr Rob Lyons was sitting at the stall. He's the associate

editor there, and I'd once submitted an article to him in January whichwasn't approved. I said hi, and he talked about what they do at Spiked,

and told me to feel free to try a submission again, pointing out that

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articles about India would be better accepted. He was a really nice guy,

and it was a fun talk. And then, we were about to leave the Barbican

when suddenly in the corner of my eye, I spotted someone and walked

away from our group into the Speakers' Room. It was Mr Duleep

Allirajah, the sports columnist at Spiked. I'd been reading his columnconsiderably, and he had somereally cool viewpoints. He said he loved

reviews on his article and told me to keep in touch, and I told him that

I'd just followed him on Twitter. Sure enough, later that day I got a

notification saying that he was following me back.

Thanks to Austin's book and the talk with Theo, I'd drawn up a fewpoints that got quoted at the end of this article here. It's an

invaluable experience to discover new ideas, and the best way to do

that is, in my opinion, by putting yourself out there and interacting

with people.

That just about sums up two days of interactions, but doesn't comeeven close to describing everything we did in those two days (let alone

the rest of the week). Considering that this article took a month (I've

been busy since returning, what with exams), the next article will

probably be a while away. Not much of a conclusion, yes, but do keep

reading and waiting patiently for what comes next.

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