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How Not To Greet Important People by Nikhil Amarnath | Campus Diaries

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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 many
people 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 of
the 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, it
still 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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How Not To Greet Important People by Nikhil Amarnath | Campus Diaries

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 good
side, 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 into
play. 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 great
precedent, 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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How Not To Greet Important People by Nikhil Amarnath | Campus Diaries

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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How Not To Greet Important People by Nikhil Amarnath | Campus Diaries

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 with
her 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 are
great. 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

How Not To Greet

she could join, and she had lots to say regarding our topic. Midway
Important People
through our topic, Mr Pedro Bismarck asked if he could join our table

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

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

magazine based in Portugal,
Attending a
and
massive
I'd read
debate
a few
festival
articles
is no joking
frommatter,
just a
especially with a Speaker badge on you; it's an opportunity
Amarnath
to meet many important people. This is the ultimate guide
31st
Dec
2013
me where I was
"India?
You read through
Portuguese
on from.
how NOT
to beginWow.
an introduction,
a few

Nikhil I immediately brought it up. He was pretty surprised, he

week before;

asked

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How Not To Greet Important People by Nikhil Amarnath | Campus Diaries

magazine in India?"examples...
We all laughed a bit, and then they talked about
the debate they 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 so
different when it's narrated in a personal tone. Perhaps all the
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information you need is a slide away on your smartphone...Later that

5 me about
25
1
evening, when we met Pedro again,2 he told
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, and
promised to visit Bangalore after inviting us to Portugal.
Battle of Ideas/TOM FENN
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 Future debate.
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 unnecessarilyTweet
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
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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 one
who 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, *cue
mock 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.

"ToNikhil:Ithasbeenanhonourtoknowandmeetyou.Iapologiseif
thisbookletyoudowninthedebate...butnowyoucanmoveforwardto
biggerandbetterthings.Signed,AustinWilliams."

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

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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 Finals
and 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's
downstairs 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 Barbican
architectural 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 fifteen
minutes. 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 which
wasn'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 column
considerably, and he had some really 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 few
points 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 come
even 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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Published by Nikhil Amarnath from NPS Koramangala

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