আড্ডা
Adda
Politics. Cinema. Football. Literature. Relationships. Life. Absolutely everything, at length, and nobody has to win.
- Topics
- 6
- Duration
- Longer than it needs to be
Definition
Not conversation. An institution.
Adda is not small talk and it is not a meeting. The defining condition is that it must not accomplish anything. If a decision gets made, it stops being an adda and becomes something worse.
The historian Dipesh Chakrabarty wrote a serious academic essay on it, arguing that adda was the Bengali middle class’s answer to the question of what to do with the modern city: a way of holding onto sociability while everything else was becoming transactional.
It has locations. The Coffee House on College Street, the rowak or front stoop of a north Kolkata house, a tea shop, a park bench, and now, contentiously, a WhatsApp group.
- 01
It must be unproductive.
If a decision gets made it stops being an adda and becomes a meeting, which is worse.
- 02
The table outlasts the people.
Groups held the same Coffee House table for decades. Membership changed by attrition. You were not invited; you were absorbed.
- 03
Digression is the form, not a failure of it.
Start on the derby, arrive at Ghatak, end on your uncle's second marriage, and return to the derby having forgotten who was arguing which side.
- 04
Tea is mandatory. Food is optional.
Nobody comes for the infusion coffee at the Coffee House and everyone orders it.
- 05
Nobody has to win.
Dipesh Chakrabarty wrote a serious academic essay arguing adda was the Bengali middle class's answer to the modern city: a way of keeping sociability while everything else became transactional.
- 06
Complaining that adda is dead is part of adda.
The complaint has been made continuously since about 1961, which suggests it is a feature of the institution rather than evidence about it.
What’s your adda topic?
Footballফুটবল
You will be asked which club within about four minutes, and there is no neutral answer.
- 01
“1911 is the only result that has ever mattered.”
Mohun Bagan beat East Yorkshire Regiment 2–1 barefoot in the IFA Shield final, and every Bagan supporter will bring it up. East Bengal supporters point out it was 1911 and ask what has happened since.
- 02
“The derby carries Partition inside it.”
East Bengal was founded by and for people from the eastern districts and became, after 1947, the refugee club. The fish markets sell prawn and hilsa as proxies on match day and the price moves with the result. Some say this is beautiful; others that it is a wound nobody will let heal.
- 03
“Indian football died and Kolkata killed it.”
The counter is that Kolkata kept it alive when the rest of the country went to cricket, filled a hundred-thousand-seat stadium for a league match, and got nothing back for it.
Where this gets argued
- The Maidan club tents
- Any tea shop on a derby morning
- Salt Lake Stadium, two hours before kick-off
Where to sit