ABEER:
I was tapping a nervous beat on the wooden desk with the edge of my pen as the seats in the auditorium filled. It was after a long time that I had felt like that.
"Will you please stop that?", a stylish blonde sitting next to me said in a bitingly sharp tone and I stopped.
The President's seat was empty yet and Sahir sat next to it on the Secretary's seat, completely lost  in finding something on the page before him.
"Are you okay?", Alex, who was sitting next to me, asked.
"Hmm", I said.
"You look completely pale", he said.
"Its just a minor headache", I said.
"Seriously? ", he raised an eyebrow.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats and maintain silence to welcome the President Harvard Debating Society ", both of us turned towards Sahir who had completed his announcement.
I looked towards the door that opened right on the stage with curiosity and when the President entered, my heart jumped up to my throat.
He was elegantly attired in the University's blazer over his casual dress and his blazer glistened with the numerous badges and medals attached to it. In a robust pace, he walked to his chair and unbuttoning his blazer, took his seat.
"Good Afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen. I, Asad Sanjarani, welcome you all to this unofficial yet formal debating session as the President of the Harvard Debating society. I hope that all the contestants are well aware of the rules and procedure, but for your convenience, I will request the Secretary, Sahir Khan Afridi, to repeat them and carry on with the rest of the proceedings", he said and sat folding his arms but me........ my heart was ready to break out of my ribcage and I had lost all my confidence in a second. I could feel my body shaking and a state of nausea welled up inside me. Sahir had read out all the rules and announced that for this session, our progress would be accessed chiefly by the President and then by the Secretary and the three senior most members of debating society to short list the candidates.
Sahir stood up from his chair, grabbing the thin pile of blank pages that lied on the desk before him. He began placing one page before every contestant.
"I want to go", I said as he gave a page to Alex who sat next to me.
"Why?", he asked giving a page to me.
"I can't speak before him", I said looking towards Asad. He turned around a bit and after casting one look at him, said:
"Abeer he is literally the friendliest President that Harvard ever had", and went away but that wasn't enough for me.
When he was going back, he stopped before me.
"I just want to say one thing Abeer. Forget everything. Do it for me. Do it to make me proud", he said, smiled and went back up on the stage, placing a big glass jar before Asad with chits inside it. The time for assigning topics had come.

ASAD:
As Sahir distributed the blank pages among the candidates, I went through the list containing their names and was surprised to find "Abeer Asad" mentioned in there.
I looked up at her among the other candidates as she muttered something to Sahir, a dozen colours changing on her face which automatically caused my lips to curve up into a smile. Sahir came back and placed the glass jar containing the anonymous chits from the members of the debating society with random topics written on them. The time for topic allocation had come.
I took out the chits, one by one after announcing the names of the contestants and assigned them the topics. Till the last nine speakers, I hadn't found any humorous or really interesting topic. All of them had been about social issues, world problems and political nostalgia.
"Abeer Asad", I announced in the microphone and took out a neatly folded chit from the jar.
"The Human Monsters", the topic written was nothing different from those that I had previously allocated but just then, in less than a second, my mind made a decision.
"How I define love", my voice boomed in the microphone as I crumpled the chit and threw it in the dustbin beneath the table.
She kept on looking at me for a while and then picked up her pencil to make notes. After ten minutes, Sahir invited the first speaker to approach the podium and I sat alertly to analyze his performance.
In the next 36 minutes, I tried to concentrate on the debates of the speakers but I waited eagerly for Sahir to announce her name.
"Abeer Asad", his voice emerged in the microphone and I shifted a little forward in my seat as she made her way to the podium.
She stood there, resting her hands on the podium and was the only speaker who had approached there without her page. I guessed that she wasn't going to speak but I still wrote a +2 on her mark sheet, in case she spoke.
"Love is a word that I would define as......", she began opposite to my expectations and looking me square in my eye, proceeded.
"....perfect, amazing,beautiful, just plain, awesome, the tears on your pillow, the outbursts of laughter in the middle of class, friendship set on fire, like a war between your head and heart, both your enemy and your best friend, what makes you keep going back to a person, pain and happiness at the same time.
Love is when you look into someone's eyes and see their heart.
Mr President,
Love in maths, is a problem. In History, its a battle. In Science, its a reaction and in Art, its a heart", she said and suddenly, there was a round of applause, so loud that it echoed.
" Love isn't always going to be perfect"
she continued.
"Its not a fairytale or storybook so it does not always come easy. Sometimes it breaks your heart and you know what is the most amazing thing about love?", she asked. There was dead silence. I could hear the suspense in the auditorium as everyone sat still to listen to her. She had literally 'captured' the  audience.
"The most amazing thing is that you still love the person with every broken piece", she said with a smile that pulled on the strings of my heart.
"I rest my case", she said and stepped down in an even louder round of applause and that was the first debate for which I actually clapped.
She had indeed, surprised and impressed me.