By: Ananya Chatterjee, Haldia Government College in Haldia
As an antidote to loneliness, the Bengali adda culture has no equal.
Adda is a way of life and key to happiness for many Bengalis. Adda can be characterised as the practice of friends gathering together for extended and informal conversations. People can spend hours in adda sessions.
Some of the traditional spaces of adda would be parlors of middle-class houses, narrow ledges along residential houses called rawk, teashops, sports pavilions, the canteens of schools and colleges.
It is markedly different from small talk or chitchats. It can best be defined as a fluid and relaxed conversation between members of an informal or quasi group of people. Although it has sometimes been translated as hangout, this cannot capture the true essence of the phenomenon called adda.
As an antidote to loneliness, particularly in old age, adda has no equal. As one retired Kolkata resident told this researcher: "Adda … is the reason I get up early in the morning."
Although the word exists in other Indian languages, it is considered to be an integral and quintessential part of what it means to be a Bengali.
In his seminal essay on adda, famous Bengali writer Buddhadev Bose claims that although adda is pan-Indian: "It reveals itself in its fullest glory only in the moist breeze of Bengal. Our seasons quicken adda in the same way that they awaken poetry."
More than just conversation
Adda is not simply conversation, or discussion, or debate, or gossip; and yet it is all these. Adda is also not a club; it has no rules and it is informal in nature. A perfect adda should include a little bit of everything under the sun — literature, arts, science and technology, sports, entertainment, cinema, politics, jokes, memes, gossip — the list is endless.
And it can take place anywhere: in the privacy of a drawing room, a local teashop, a park or the canteens of college, university and office. There are many places in Kolkata that are famous for adda, such as, Indian Coffee House in College Street, Mitra Café near Shovabazar Metro Station, Basanta Cabin.
There are and there were many famous literary adda — Monday Club by Sukumar Ray or more recently adda at the residence of poet Shankha Ghosh every Sunday until his death in April 2021.
The members of an adda session can be students, office workers, intellectuals, traders — people coming from and belonging to a wide spectrum of the Bengali society. Adda can include members from various age groups.
The adda culture owes its origin to the colonial past of Bengal.
Traditionally adda has been predominantly a male activity.
As recently as 1960, it was uncommon to see a woman participating in an adda with men. Chakravarty has shown that traditional middle-class perceptions of respectability would deny women from participating in adda with men whom they were not related to.
But increasing association between literary modernity and the spaces of adda allowed women’s entry into adda.
Today, adda is no longer an exclusively male activity, though men are still the dominant gender. Adda is also no longer a strict domain of the upper class or educated — people from all strata are seen enjoying this interaction, although members of an adda tend to belong to the same socioeconomic status.
Where there's adda, there is something to eat and drink and smoke. An adda is incomplete without a cup of tea. Colloquial words such as ganjano and gultani for instance, were often used pejoratively in relation to practices of adda to emphasise its propinquity to idleness.
How adda benefits the elderly
But adda has its benefits too, especially in the "third age" or what we popularly call old age.
Research suggests that having friends in the third age as in any other period of life, consistently corresponds with happiness and satisfaction. Friends provide support, companionship, and acceptance, which are crucial to older adults' sense of self-esteem.
They provide opportunities to trust, confide, and share mutually contented and discontented activities. They also seem to protect against stress, physical and mental problems, and premature death.
Later life is apt to be a time during which friendships are particularly relevant. Friendship has numerous health benefits too, for individuals in later life.
For example, close ties with friends, as well as the presence of a spouse, are linked to increased survival rates of the aged. Extended social networks and higher levels of social engagement are correlated positively with cognitive functioning, and with a lower rate of cognitive decline, among older people all over the world.
Adda plays a crucial role for maintaining the physical and psychological well being of adolescents as well as older adults in Kolkata.
This researcher spoke to the residents of Kolkata across various age groups about adda culture. In the words of Shyamal Kanti Sen, a 67-year-old resident of Saltlake: "Adda after a morning walk is like an energy drink to me. Be it sunny, rainy or cold, I never miss my morning walk. More than the walk itself, the adda that follows at the nearby teashop is the reason I get up early in the morning."
The younger generation echoes this sentiment. Bidushi, an undergraduate student at a prestigious college at Kolkata, admits quite frankly that she often bunks her class because of the adda at a café near her college.
"Sometimes the adda sessions are more engaging and interesting than the class lectures," she quips.
'Better than therapy'
Another elderly person, Madhushree Chatterjee, a retired principal of a college and now residing in an old age home at New Town, still visits her old neighbourhood in North Kolkata every week because she does not want to miss the weekly adda at her old para (neighbourhood).
What are the psychological benefits of adda? When this researcher posed this question during an adda session to one of her friends, Rima Chakraborty, who is also a psychologist, she said: "Adda with like-minded people, where one can have heart-to-heart conversations, share their views without any judgement is crucial for mental wellbeing. It is better than therapy."
COVID-19 and the lockdown made it difficult for people to meet physically. The adda groups were dismantled. But soon those who could or were well equipped with information and communications technology shifted their adda to the virtual world, especially the younger generations.
The elderly people struggled on that front and as the lockdown restrictions were relaxed gradually, they resumed their addas at their favourite spots. Hectic work schedule, the addiction to smartphones and social media and migration of younger people from Kolkata to other Indian cities and abroad mean that adda culture is endangered.
But the ritual is so enmeshed in the Bengali psyche that most people do not even realize it is a cultural heritage that might someday be lost due to changing lifestyles and something that needs to be preserved as the hallmark of Bengali culture.
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.
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